You’re standing in a grocery store when you witness a man use abusive language towards his girlfriend. You’re on the subway when a woman screams an ethnic slur at the man sitting across the aisle from her. Or maybe you’re at a cocktail party and your colleague makes an inappropriate comment about another coworker. These are all circumstances in which bystander intervention could impact the outcome. But unfortunately, when we’re confronted with a situation, we may not know how best to react.
The good news is, there’s a “popular myth” that when people are standing in a crowd and something bad happens, they’re unlikely to react, says Alan Berkowitz, who is an expert on the bystander effect and the author of Response-Ability: A Complete Guide to Bystander Intervention. But the latest research on bystander intervention shows that most people feel compelled to help when they can. When they don’t help, ...
