Bystander effect: How otherwise "normal" people don't help people who need help

[cyu]

Latané and Rodin staged an experiment around a woman in distress in 1969. 70 percent of the people alone called out or went to help after they believed she had fallen and gotten hurt, but when there were other people in the room only 40 percent offered help.

Although most research has been conducted on adults, children can be bystanders too. A study in 2007 came up with seven reasons why children do not help when another classmate is in distress. These include: trivialisation, dissociation, embarrassment association, busy working priority, compliance with a competitive norm, audience modelling, and responsibility transfer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

"Who said the world was fair?"
"They can't even speak real English."
"I got my own job to do."
"They're just trying to take advantage of people like me."
"No hippies."
"Get a job!"

[Tjis]

No. You can't just trivially generalize the outcome of an experiment dealing with face-to-face situations and make it explain apathy in societal issues.

The situation described in the experiments is one where most people are probably thinking something along the lines of, 'someone ought to do something!', but then they do not cause nobody else is doing anything, and conforming is an easy fallback, especially in stressful situations.

Whereas when we deal with societal's issues, this thought, 'someone ought to do something!' is often not even present. For most people the responsibility for doing something lies with the state. And when the state, rather than helping an impoverished community, sends in the police to bring order, then to many people that is the right thing.
The problem here is not the bystander effect, but authoritarianism: the widespread idea that the authorities are right, despite all evidence to the contrary.