5 comments

  1. Ruth Behan says:

    Very interesting – thanks Dr Stu – and well done for saving the diabetic person. Does it make a difference how well we know people – ?

    • Hi Ruth! Great question.
      The greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person in distress. One of the reasons for this is called ‘diffusion of responsibility’ which means the more people in the area, the more everyone assumes someone else will do something or is qualified to do something!
      To my knowledge, research has only been done on strangers – But I would expect that the effect would be quite a bit less if we knew who the person suffering was; as it would give us a burden of responsibility to do something… (and we’d also know that they weren’t a dangerous person or a ‘con-artist’)

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