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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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This phenomenon has been thoroughly researched since the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964. She was attacked at night just outside her home. She fought the murderer off, but he returned and attacked her again as she lay in the street. Repeatedly he ran away and returned, the murder taking a full half hour. Although she was screaming for help in a densely populated neighbourhood, no one came to her assistance, nor even alerted the police, although police established afterwards that her screams were heard by at least 38 of her neighbours.
Psychologists have supposed that in this case a process known as diffusion of responsibility was at work. This means that when individuals know that many others are present, then they as individuals do not bear the full burden of responsibility. They make the assumption that someone else must be taking care of that or surely someone must have done something by now'.
In the College where I work, the Psychology lecturer once arranged for her class to have to use the language laboratory on some kn. of pretext. Not long after she had started the lesson in the language laboratory, she was called away to the telephone. While she was away, someone was attacked in the room next to the language lab. There were screams and the sound of falling furniture. Eventually everything went quiet. None of the Psychology students went to investigate. The Psychology lecturer had set the whole thing up before she left. She had taken care to start the language lab recording before she left. She played the students the recording of how they had behaved during her absence. Sure enough, the consensus view was that 'somebody'll do something about it'.
This is similar to risky shift found in the decisions taken by committees. You might think that when decisions are taken by a committee, the decisions are likely to be rather unadventurous. After all, a committee consists of all sorts of different people, often with conflicting views. Committee procedure - with chairman, secretary, minutes secretary and so on - is designed to minimise open conflict between the members, so you would expect committees to arrive at decisions which are rather pallid compromises.
In fact, however, it has frequently been observed that committees reach bolder, more adventurous decisions than any single committee member would take. This phenomenon is known as risky shift. It is not quite clear why it happens. It could perhaps be due to the greater persuasiveness of the more adventurous members of the committee, but it seems fairly certain that it is in part due to the diffusion of responsibility which occurs amongst the members. Neither one of them is fully responsible for the decision taken and so they are free to take risky decisions without bearing the burden of responsibility for them. More recent researchers have, however, shown that committees are also very likely to reach extremely cautious decisions. As a result, the term group polarization has been introduced, which encompasses both extremes. Either way, it remains odd, on the surface of it, that groups do not simply reach a decision which is the aggregate of all their members' views. Conceivably, this is not due solely to deindividuation, but also in part to groupthink.
Various psychological experiments have been conducted and the results appear to support the hypothesis that people do feel that their responsibility is diffused amongst any others they know to be present.
Is it likely that in a democratic society diffusion of responsibility is likely to be a reason for inaction? What do you think? It seems to me that it is, though I can't find any research to support my view. In a democracy there are formally established channels for protesting against government policy. We all have access to these channels - writing to the press, establishing a pressure group, organising a march, phoning in to the radio, writing to our MP etc. Because we know that all citizens have the right to protest in those ways, could it be that we are inclined to leave the protests to someone else.
Conformity
Deindividuation
Obedience
Rebellion
Minority influence
Power of social rôles
Conflict resolution
Groups and Teams
Mass Media Effects Research
Political Propaganda and Persuasion
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