The Person and the Situation

by Lee Ross

Darley and Latané undertook a number of studies to confirm the strongest version of this hypothesis – that is, that a victim’s chances of receiving help would be greater if there were only a single bystander available than if there were a whole group of such bystanders. In one study (Latané & Darley, 1968), male undergraduates at Columbia were left to fill out a questionnaire either by themselves, with two other subjects, or with two confederates of the experimenter instructed to remain impassive and continue working when the subsequent “emergency” occurred. This emergency consisted of a stream of “smoke” that began to pour into the room through a wall vent, eventually filling up the entire room. While 75 percent of the solitary bystanders left the room to report the smoke, only 10 percent of the bystanders who participated alongside the two impassive confederates, and only 38 percent of the three-person groups, ever intervened in this way.