In this blog I wanted to talk about Latane and Darley’s experiment of diffusion of responsibility. This last couple weeks I have been paying attention and I realized that this human behavior is really common in our society. Diffusion of responsibility is a social-psychological phenomenon by which a person is less likely to take responsibility for action when others are in present. The clearest example I saw about this circumstance was I while ago, during spring break. I was taking a break from my ski day. I could see the entire slope from the bench which I was sitting. A man probably about 20 years old was going down with his snowboard really fast. He seemed to handle it pretty well, but suddenly he tripped on something and fell down in a rough way. He looked like he was in pain. Me and my friends saw the action perfectly and were worried about him, but it seemed like we were the only ones who cared. The people that were going down the same slope just looked at him and continued skiing like if nothing happened. After about 5 minutes the guy was still on the ground. Finally, a woman stopped and called the ski patrol. I was really surprised; Why didn’t anyone else stop before? I’m sure it was not because no one cared about him. It was just a matter of diffusion of responsibility. Responsibility is diffused when there are other people that could help. Everyone thought that someone else would help him, but because of that no one actually did. I was kind of upset after what happened and started thinking that everyone had been selfish. So, based on this last case, could diffusion of responsibility be compared to the human’s ego-centrism or is it just a matter of social influence?
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