The Bystander Effect: It's Best to Ask for Help When You Need It

He has been in the woods for many days, and he would be grateful if you could carry him, if only a few meters, so that he could get back on the road.

What are you going to do? Will you stop and help him, or will you ignore him and continue on your way?

If you had the slightest bit of kindness, you would stop and help him. In fact, you might feel obligated to do so. There is no one around. You are the only person who can help. You don't want to feel responsible for what will happen without help. Don't just help him. You might even cancel your plans and carry him all the way without thinking about it at all.

Now imagine yourself in your smartest clothes walking downtown to your first day at a new job, and you're not late yet, but you're in a hurry to get there early, and everyone's on their morning commutes just like you, and you're making your way through the traffic.

In the middle of the road, you see a homeless man holding a sign that says, "I need money to buy food, anything helps."

Will you stop to give him the money, or will you go on your way?

You may tell yourself you will stop, but the truth isn't. You can remember many times in your life, perhaps just the last few days if you lived in a big city, when you got on your way instead of stopping to help.

What you fall victim to is called the bystander effect, and it doesn't only prevent you from doing the right thing as a nice, caring person. It also prevents others from helping you when you need help. Read on to learn how to overcome this strange psychological phenomenon so that you are always ready to help those in need and to ensure that you get the help you need in difficult times.

The bystander effect: someone else's problem

When you were a little kid and wanted to do something because all your friends would, your mother might have asked you, "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?"

Her goal was to get you to think carefully about your decisions and not let your friends influence you into doing stupid things that you would later regret, and you knew that was her goal. So, you answered your mother: "No, of course not."

But the truth is that unless you took good care of yourself all the time, you would have jumped off that bridge immediately. Psychological research has proven this over and over again. In order to fit in with your surroundings, you will adjust your behavior to match the group's behavior. That's why you act a certain way with your friends and a different way with your family. That's why you act one way at work and another way at home.

It's good when it helps you build strong relationships and get along with the environment. But it can also be wrong, and walking past a homeless person who desperately needs your help without offering help is just one example.

This is called the bystander effect, when you are alone, and you find a problem, you feel your mission is to solve it. After all, there is no one else to solve it, but when you are in a large group of people, you are not the only one who can help. The need does not seem so urgent.

Psychologists call this the spread of responsibility; you're in a hurry, and you have a lot of people around, and whatever problem requires a solution, whether it's a homeless man who needs food, trash in the garden, or a lost puppy, someone else will take care of it for sure.

It's a logical idea, but the problem is that everyone else thinks the same way, namely, they are in a hurry too, and they assume you will help. But it is worse than that because while you avoid the problem without giving it much attention, everyone around you does the same, and others may not notice that there is a problem at all. After all, if there were problems, they would have caught the attention of others, right?

This is how most of the daily problems that affect your life are overlooked.

Overcoming the Bystander Effect: Fixing the World and Improving Your Life

When you ask someone, "Would you walk past someone in need without helping them?" you rarely get a positive answer. Everyone assumes that they will do the right thing when the need arises. However, the bystander effect prevents us from recognizing this need, and if you think all this doesn't affect you, think again.

The bystander effect keeps you from getting the help you need every day, whether at home, work, traveling, or everywhere. So, remember that we all adjust our behavior to suit those around us, for example:

1. If you feel that you deserve and need an increase in your salary, but you don't see any of your co-workers asking for it, you're unlikely to ask for it yourself, meanwhile, all your colleagues see that you're not asking for a raise and they do the same.
2. If you want to learn to do something, but all your friends seem to need to learn how to do it, you are less likely to ask for help because they did not. Of course, they might think the same thing.
3. Maybe you have something wrong with one of your relationships, but the bystander effect prevents you from talking about it because you think the other person doesn't see the problem, but they are waiting for you to say something all the time.

The problem with the bystander effect is simple: waiting for others to find a solution to the problem while you can solve it so quickly, and vice versa.

Fixing the wrongs you see in the world, including your problems at home, work, or anywhere, requires taking full responsibility for them.

Instead of waiting for others to realize and fix a problem, you have to judge things as your morals dictate. If something seems wrong, but no one is doing anything about it, you must take it upon yourself.

You may be afraid that no one will see the problem and that you will be left alone to deal with it, but the bystander effect dictates the opposite. Everyone sees the problem and is waiting for you to do something about it. Once you do that, you will bring attention to the problem, and others will feel compelled to help, too.

This applies to the problems of your life as much as it does to the problems of others, and because of the bystander effect, others may see that you need help.

However, they will only intervene once they feel it is their responsibility to do so because if one of them does not do something, neither will anyone else.

If you need help, you should reach out to someone who can help you and specifically ask for help, for example:

1. If you're lost in a big foreign city, and it won't help to look at your map confusedly, talk to someone and ask for directions.
2. If you need a raise and hinting that you're delinquent on the mortgage won't get you the money you need, make an appointment with your boss to discuss compensation.
3. If you're lying bleeding on the sidewalk, don't expect hundreds of people to come to your aid immediately. You have to point to someone and say clearly that you need their help.

In conclusion

Do you remember that homeless guy with the sign you ran into and ignored him the other day? The guy everyone else went through? How would you act if he grabbed you by the arm and said, "I'm going to die by tomorrow if I don't get some food, can you help me?"