Project description
Understanding the causal mechanisms behind helping
The myth of passive bystanders, despite evidence of their attempts to help, has led to decades of experimental research aimed at understanding why people often remain inactive in the presence of others during emergencies. However, recent video analyses have revealed that bystanders in groups are often highly active during real-life violent incidents. The ERC-funded COLLECTIVEBYSTANDER project aims to understand why bystanders choose to help during public emergencies. Using an extensive dataset of CCTV footage and virtual reality experiments, the project will refine an explanatory model to identify the causal mechanisms behind helping behaviour. It will shift the focus from individual inaction to collective action in bystander intervention.
Objective
The public myth about passive bystanders originated 50 years ago with the case of Kitty Genovese, a young woman raped and murdered in New York. Reporters claimed 38 people witnessed the crime but did nothing to help her. Although the police case file later showed that some bystanders in fact had tried to help, the incident inspired decades of experimental studies trying to explain why bystanders in the presence of others remain inactive toward persons in need of help. While this ‘bystander effect’ is among the most replicated findings in the social sciences, recent video observations of real-life violent emergencies show that bystanders in groups are far from passive. This Collective Bystander program aims to explain why and how bystanders take action to help in public emergencies. Utilizing state-of-the-art video analysis, the largest dataset of CCTV footage ever assembled (4,000 clips of emergencies in Cape Town and Amsterdam), and virtual reality experiments, it will advance an explanatory model that identifies the causal mechanisms that drive helping—a model generalizable beyond experimental settings and violent emergencies. It breaks new scientific ground by: (1) offering a theory that can explain why bystanders take collective action in real-life emergencies, instead of assuming that helping is an individual decision and responsibility; (2) studying how helping happens, rather than focusing on the lack of helping or merely establishing whether bystanders help or not; (3) providing insight into how the type of emergency influences helping behavior; (4) elucidating the interactional mechanisms that prompt helping, moving beyond merely examining variables that correlate with helping; (5) integrating the real-life validity of video observation with the causality-testing capacity of virtual reality experimentation. In sum, the program will set a new research agenda that shifts the focus from individual inaction to collective action in explaining bystander helping.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-COG
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1081 HV Amsterdam
Netherlands
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