Last night I watched a video about a social experiment and it certainly called my attention. The experiment was called “the missing child”. After watching the video I did some research and I noticed that a lot of people had tried it before. The idea of the experiment was to observe how often people fail to notice their surroundings and, when they don’t, what is their fear to get involved in the situation. The experimenters hanged posters with information and a picture of a “missing child” on all the trees in a park. Some people stopped to read the poster while others didn’t look at all. At first, no one noticed that the “missing child” was sitting in one of the benches in the park. After a few hours they moved the child next to one of the posters so he could be easily seen. Some people recognized him but they didn’t say anything, they didn’t get involved. They just stared at him for a few seconds and continued walking. I realized that this human behavior could be a consequence of the bystander effect. This social phenomenon happens when individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. People don’t like to get involved in a potentially uncomfortable situation specially if no one else seems to be doing so. What do you guys think about the results of this experiment? Did they surprise you?
This reminds me of the experiment in a documentary we watched, in which researchers set up a child in the middle of the city asking for help, testing who would go and help him. Ultimately, no one came to help him. I imagine that people would act this way perhaps because they are too busy to put in the time to help someone. On the other hand, like we observed in the documentary and you said, the bystander effect is very prominent in almost everyone. We assume that others will take care of a situation, but since everyone thinks this way, no one does anything. While the results of the experiment that you described are disappointing, given what would likely happen if an actual child were missing, but are not particularly surprising.
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