Defending humanity?

I have an assignment for Social Psychology where I need to find newspaper/media reports of events that can be explained by social psych theories. One such was the news on Oct 17th 2011. A two-year old Chinese girl gets run over by a van and is caught on CCTV. People walk past this bleeding toddler and no-one offered help. All 18 of them. Another car drives by and runs over her legs. It wasn’t until the 19th person that stopped and dragged her body to the side and called for help.

What is this? A reflection of the moral (or dare I say, lack of) standards of the Chinese? As some You-Tubers have commented, does this show that the Chinese really have no souls? Some even go so far to say that this event illustrates the degradation of humanity.

Before you go about posting You-Tube videos on Facebook or adding comments that insult China, Chinese or the lack of morals in humans, I hope you read this.

This shocking incident is a perfect example of what is known as the Bystander Effect. People often think there is safety in numbers. However, past events have told otherwise. The probability of help is inversely related to the number of people present, or expected to be present. That is, if person A sees someone in need of help, the probability of A helping is greater if A thinks nobody else is present. However, if A was in a group, or on a busy street, or thinks that others are present, A is less likely to help because A will think someone else will help. A might also think, if no one has offered help, maybe this isn’t that big of a problem. A might think, if I made a move whilst no one did, I might look stupid. I might be making a big deal out of nothing.

If you still think this is more related to the degradation of humanity and morals, well, the Bystander Effect was first demonstrated in 1968, following the notorious murder of Kitty Genovese. Maybe you’ve heard of this case, maybe not, but either way, Kitty was murdered in front of her neighbours and no one had called for help. She ran around screaming, with a man chasing her, repeatedly stabbing at her. This lasted for 30 minutes and still, not one person tried to stop the murder or call the police.

Anyways, I am not defending China. Rather, I would like to point out that, although shocking and heartbreaking, this is not something new. This is not a reflection of the Chinese’ lack of heart and soul. This is us. This is human. Maybe if you or I were in that situation, we might also not do anything to help…..