Bystander Intervention Paradigm

The bystander intervention paradigm, pioneered by Latane and Darley in 1968, experimentally demonstrates the bystander effect: the counterintuitive finding that individuals are less likely to help in an emergency when other people are present. In their classic studies a participant encounters a staged emergency -- smoke filling a room, a person apparently having a seizure, or a fall -- either alone or in the company of others (sometimes passive confederates). The dependent measures are whether and how quickly the participant intervenes. Helping reliably declines, and slows, as the number of bystanders increases, an effect Latane and Darley explained through diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance, and audience inhibition. They formalized the path to helping as a sequence of decisions, each of which the presence of others can derail. The paradigm reshaped understanding of prosocial behavior and emergency response.