In case you were depressed about humanity, as Jaime was, by that last post, I'll go a little further into why we decide to help or not to help people. In the end, the decisions seem very natural and human, if not heroic, but you might be depressed a little bit first. And, I'm also going to tell you a story you've heard before.
In 1964, Kitty Genovese was walking from her car to her apartment (30m away) in Queens after she got off from work. This guy stabbed her, she yelled, some people yelled at him to leave her alone, he left, she attempted to crawl to her apartment, the guy came back ten minutes later, stabbed her some more, then raped her, and all in all, this took about an hour while she was screaming for help. She was outside an apartment complex with more than thirty people living in it, and considering that people knew she was being attacked, the public wondered, "Why didn't someone call the police, or try to help her somehow?" Well, someone did call the police a while later as an afterthought. But she was already dead.
People thought, those callous New Yorkers, they just don't care about anything. But some psychologists were like, "Seriously? No way. There must be an explanation." And after doing a lot of studies, of which there are some really funny stories, they concluded that there are a series of yes/no questions that people ask themselves that determine whether or not they help in an emergency.
First, do you notice that something's happening? If no, continue being distracted by whatever, if yes, ask yourself next question:
Second, do you think it's an emergency? Sometimes, people will ignore smoke filling a room if no one else does anything about it, assuming everyone else knows somethign that they don't. If you do think it's an emergency:
Third, do you take responsibility? When there are more people around, people tend to think that someone else will take care of it, and then nothing happens. Remember in First Aid training, when they told you to point directly at someone and say, "You! Call 911!" 'Cause if you just shout, "Somebody call 911!" nothing much is goign to happen.
Fourth, even if you take responsibility, do you know how to help? Someone might really want to help someone who needs it, but they have no idea what to do. I'd most likely stand around flapping my hands, saying, "Call a doctor! Call a doctor!" if I was trying to help someone having a heart attack. But hey, at least I tried in this hypothetical situation. Points for effort.
Fifth, provide the help! What messes some people up in this situation is that they're embarassed, don't have enough time to do what's needed, or get so inhibited from being in front of people that they freeze.
So, if you make it through all of these, you're going to help. If you're like me, you'll stand around flapping your hands. If you're Jaime, you'll nevertheless pound enthusiastically on his chest, shouting, "Live, dammit!"
If you actually read all of this, I'm very impressed. And as a treat, I'll tell you that one of the studies they did to test step two, they put people in a room either alone or with two other people, and while they were filling out a questionnaire, pumped smoke into the room through a vent. Alone, most people whisked out of the room pretty quickly to tell the experimenter there was smoke in the room. With other people there also filling out questionnaires, most people sat there until the experimenter came in after six minutes had passed to stop the study. Silly people.
Well, this has been a nice review of my last social psych class lecture. Pavel/Pasha/Sam looks very cute and has pincheable cheeks. Time for class!
