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For some months now I've been doing the series I titled: Some of the Most Interesting Experiments Carried Out by Psychologists and Scientists. In this series I simply get hold of some very interesting experiments and their findings from the various books I read and I post a couple of them. I've done 8 editions of this series now, you can check it out in the link above.

So usually I'll just post the experiments and their findings with only few words from myself. I usually post 2 or more different experiments in one edition. But now I've come to realize that many of these experiments need more words from me. Also putting a couple of experiments under the title "Some of the Most Interesting Experiments Carried Out by Psychologists and Scientists" takes away the shine from these individual experiments as it might not interest a person to read as much as it would have interested them if what the experiment is about was right there on the title of the post.

So I've decided to change, from now I'll put what the experiment is about on the title of the post and I'll focus on one experiment in every post, see if there's more lessons to be drawn from therein, draw them and bare them for all to see. So let's go!

Psychological Experiment that Proves the Saying "Everyone's Responsibility is No One's Responsibility" and Important Lessons to Learn

Today's experiment was reported by Mail Gladwell in his book "The Tipping Point" and it's about an experiment carried out by two New York City psychologists: Bibb Latane of Columbia University and John Darley of New York University. They:

conducted a series of studies to try to understand what they dubbed the "bystander problem." They staged emergencies of one kind or another in different situations in order to see who would come and help. What they found, surprisingly, was that the one factor above all else that predicted helping behavior was how many witnesses there were to the event.

In one experiment, for example, Latane and Darley had a student alone in a room stage an epileptic fit. When there was just one person nest door, listening, that person rushed to the student's aid 85 percent of the time. But when subjects thought that there were four others also overhearing the seizure, they came to the student's aid only 31 percent of the time. In another experiment, people who saw smoke seeping out from under a doorway would report it 75 percent of the time when they were on their own, but the incident would be reported only 38 percent of the time when they were in a group. When people are in a group, in other words, responsibility for acting is diffused.

They assume that someone else will make the call, or they assume that because no one else is acting, the apparent problem — the seizure-like sounds from the other room, the smoke from the door — isn't really a problem. In the case of Kitty Genovese, then, social psychologists like Latane and Darley argue, the lesson is not that no one called despite the fact that thirty-eight people heard her scream; it's that no one called because thirty-eight people heard her scream. Ironically, had she been attacked on a lonely street with just one witness, she might have lived.

Quite insane, you'd agree, how something like the number of people around can affect how people react to really serious situations.

Important Lessons to Learn

Gladwell used this experiment to show only how much the environment matters, how much little things in the environment which we never suspected matters. In this case the number of people around was the aspect of the environment.

In this series I seek to look further through the perspective the experiments have given us and get more lessons and messages from the findings of the experiment. In this case the most important lesson should be that:

(1). We should be vigilant and always ready to fight our apathy whenever something happens while we're in the company of a lot of people:

From the experiment above it has been explained how the number of people around can affect our concern and response. It is natural human behavior, but now that we've learnt about it and seen how harmful it can be our next action should be to fight these tendencies in us.

Whenever something happens while you're in the company of others always make sure to be the one to do something about it. Always make sure to fight that urge that makes you unconcerned thinking someone else should do it or as someone else hasn't done it it's probably not important. The others who haven't done anything probably haven't done anything because you haven't done anything yourself.

So do something! With the knowledge you've got from this experiment, be the bigger person and do something, the other people most likely haven't read this experiment and they don't have this knowledge. So if there's smoke, a scream or any sort of thing that indicates an emergency always be the one to fight your apathy and find out if everything is alright, what you can do to help and then help.

Another lesson:

(2). Too many people shouldn't be in charge of a responsibility that can be handled by a lesser number of people: A lot of thought has to go into how many people are too many when it comes to handling responsibilities. For sure every responsibility/case would have it's own peculiarities and suitable number so there's no one size fits all here, thoughts for different cases should be carried out.

What Other Lessons Do You Think We Can Learn From This Experiment?

On the Psychological/Scientific Experiments Series

• (Find the first edition here)

• The second here

• The Third

• The fourth

• The Fifth

• The Sixth

• The Seventh

• The Eighth

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Roll with @nevies, I run a Humor, deeper thoughts and sex talk blog here on Hive🌚

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