by Cynthia Roebuck
Rushing to our next destination we give very little thought to the obstacle we jump or the homeless person we avoid eye contact with because all we had in our pocket was a card. It was just a blur. The ear buds keep the hellos from reaching our ears, and we use these psychological tricks to compartmentalize and filter sidewalk and commuting moments so we can accomplish all we need to do in our time budgeted sensitive lives. These are the six identifiable signs of stimulus overload Milgram (1977) identified. Some times we can find ourselves so caught up in our lives that we can miss a tree of money that Amy Krause Rosenthal and friends demonstrate in this video.
Courtesy Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s “The Money Tree” (copyright reserved)
In this light hearted video of kind minded folks, the possible stimulus overload showing some self-absorbed people is humorous. But, when an ambiguous emergency situation is happening, people may retreat into themselves and look to others in the area for social cues on what to do. When no one else is reacting, personal responsibility becomes diffused into the group lessening the dissonance one may feel for a need to react. Unfortunately, if all people in the immediate environment of an ambiguous emergency situation fall victim to the bystander effect no help at all may be rendered (Lafreniere, Page, & Senn, 2012, p. 313).
Aronson, Wilson, & Akert (2012) in their fantastic introductory textbook to social psychology discuss a significant piece of research showing how to take the power away from this effect. It’s very simple. Make people aware of it. Beman, Barnes, Klentz, & McQuirk’s (1978) randomly assigned students to two groups where one listened to a Latane and Darley (1970) lecture on the bystander effect and the other listened to a random lecture (as cited in Aronson et al., 2012). Then, two weeks went by and the participants were called in for an unrelated sociology lecture by Beaman et al. who invented this lecture as an excuse to get the students on a path were a confederate was laying on the floor in an ambiguous enough manner that it could not be immediately understood if the confederate was hurt or sleeping (as cited in Aronson, et al., 2012, pp. 344). Students who had listened to the bystander effect two weeks prior even when accompanied by a confederate who acted unconcerned took responsibility of engaging in the situation to ascertain if something was in fact wrong 43% of the time; whereas participants who were not aware of the bystander effect engaged with the confederate laying on the floor only 25% of the time (Aronson et al., 2012, p. 345). This is good evidence to warrant community workshops that make residents aware of this effect so as to prevent it from happening.
This research along with my classmates saying again and again in their personal responses to a question posed in our class about how much of an affect knowing about this effect had on their lives that I felt it warranted time in one of my blog posts. An introduction to this phenomena should be given by police when doing community projects on crime prevention. It should be introduced to young people as a way of discouraging bullying, because if they see something, they should say something. If we are made aware of why and how apathy forms, then maybe we can change it into empathy and work towards engaging with our environments more.
So as I balance through my day, I keep my eyes open because I know so many will not, but now after reading this I hope you too will keep your eyes open and begin again to engage with your community. Enjoy life, start seeing your environment & make it better.
References
Aronson, E., Wilson, T.D., & Akert, R.M. (2010). Social Psychology. Seventh Edition. Prentice Hall. ISBN 10:0-13-814478-8.
Lafreniere, KD, Page, S. & Senn, CY. (2012). Applying Social Psychology to the Community. (2nd ed.) F.W. Schnedier, J.A. Gruman, & L.M. Coutts (Eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ISBN 978- 1412976381.
Milgram, S. (1977). The individual in a social world: essays and experiments. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co.
Roebuck, CM. (2014). Urban Overload. Markers and Paper.
Rosenthal, AK. (2010). The Money Tree. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsN8FUV9nS4.
