“If you need help bark like a dog” – George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings.
This blog starts with the story of Kitty Genovese. A young women from a middle-class Italian American family who lived in Queens in New York City. Like any young woman or man she was full of dreams and ambitions. Unfortunately she didn’t have a chance to live up to see them come through. A single event in one of those beautiful springtime nights in New York City put a tragic end to them. On March 13 in 1964, the same year in which the Beatles hit the #1 spot on the U.S. singles charts for the first time, Kitty Genovese was brutally raped and murdered afterwards. The crime happened right on the street and in the middle of a New Yorker neighborhood. It took an agonizing 30 minutes from the first assault till the murderer finally let his fatally wounded victim go. Unbelievably up to 38 people have witnessed the crime in one way or another. Nobody called the police or came to help. Kitty Genovese died all alone in the middle of her neighborhood.
The case made it to the front page of the New York Times in 1964 and the public was shocked. Nobody would have thought it possible that something like this could happen in the US. Two psychologists, namely John Darley and Bibb Latané, became interested in the reasons for this and started to research how something like this could happen. In their experiments they assigned the participants either to a group or let them act alone. Then they staged an emergency situation (e.g. a woman in distress after she has fallen). These experiments resulted in a very strong and reproducible effect: the participants acting alone were much more likely to intervene than the people in a group. It seems that being in a group limits the willingness to help others. This effect later was called the “bystander effect”.
There are certain variables influencing the strength of the effect. It is for example dependent on the similarities between the group and the person needing help. Group size, cultural differences or the environment in which the emergency happens also play a role. There are actually a few theories trying to explain the effect. The most well-known of them is probably the concept of diffusion of responsibility. This theory states that when people are in a group they don’t feel personally responsible but are more likely to assume that other members of the group should be responsible.
Diffusion of responsibility is probably illustrated best in a number of cases that happened in hospitals. In all of these cases severely ill patients had been waiting for long periods of time in the waiting room (in many cases more than 24 hours). Some of them even died there without hospital staff or other patients coming to help. This is because in a hospital the patients usually assume that doctors are qualified and responsible and will therefore take care of everything. On the other hand everybody of the staff is usually responsible only for “his” patients. In the end everybody assumes that there is somebody else responsible and actually nobody intervenes or offers help.
Let’s look at some of the things psychologists found out about the bystander effect. First of all it is a very strong effect. You’ll almost certainly experience it whenever there is an unusual and problematic or probably even frightening situation. But there are ways to minimize this effect and to encourage people to actually help in such a situation. Let’s have a look at three of the things you can do when you’re in an emergency and want people to help you:
- Make it clear to everyone that this really is an emergency
- Directly address individual people (point to them or even use their names if possible)
- Give them detailed instructions what to do whenever possible
If you have these three principles in mind and act accordingly, it is much less likely that people will ignore you and your emergency.
Before we have a look into what this might mean for your daily (business) life we need a few words of caution here. First of all I certainly hope that you’ll never come across a real emergency situation where you desperately need the help of others. Instead we’ll have a general look at problems and what you can do to make people help you. For that we’ll use some of the results of the above experiments. However, be aware that there is no guarantee that the same principles apply when people are not really in an emergency. Furthermore there is a strong difference between the behavior towards group members and non-group members. The principles we are talking about here mostly apply only to non-group members. Or in other words they apply for interactions between you and people you don’t know very well.
I suppose you usually won’t have such extreme situations in your workplace as the ones we described above, but nevertheless there is something we can learn from them. In fact more or less the same principles as for the bystander effect apply every time you run into trouble. First of all don’t expect people to realize automatically that you are in trouble or have problems. In fact many people will simply ignore your problems. That may feel very bad for you but it is not always due to politics or bad behavior. On the contrary, in many cases this is something like a lightweight version of the bystander effect. That means every time you really run into trouble and need help from others you should act according to the principles described above.
- Talk to people directly and point out that you really have a problem. Make them aware of the situation without leaving any doubt. Don’t exaggerate but just describe the facts and the current situation as clearly as possible.
- Tell them what kind of help you expect from them. Don’t push them but clearly describe what kind of help or support you currently need.
- Don’t be hesitant or reluctant to talk about the fact that you need help. But please don’t do this for every problem. Only ask for help if you have something really severe.
Having a really severe problem is difficult enough. Asking for help is even more difficult! But doing it will make your life much easier doing it. Many people actually like to offer support if they can. Being altruistic makes many people feel better. But remember the bystander effect. If people don’t help you, this is not because they don’t like you or they are bad people. You simply have been a victim of the bystander effect. Don’t let this put you down! You can use the above described tactics to counter that.
What are your experiences? Did you ever have a problem and didn’t receive help feeling bad about it? How did you cope with it?
Take care!
Business Psychology 