04-22-2009, 10:46 AM
|
#83 (permalink)
|
Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
|
this is from a little further down the page in the same extract you posted, cyn.
Quote:
Darley and Latane's experiments and others inspired by the Genovese murder have led psychologists to conclude that people tend to look to others to define events. Someone who sees something that may be an emergency looks to see if other witnesses are also alarmed. If everyone seems calm or indifferent, the observer often concludes that no emergency is taking place. The group defines the event, and most people follow the spoken and unspoken norms of the group and are unwilling to risk the embarrassment-of overreacting in public. Furthermore, even if people recognize that they are witnessing an event in which help is called for, they remain unsure who is responsible for providing that help: in a group of strangers there is no captain. Responsibility is therefore diffused, and so is the guilt felt by those who do nothing.
Social psychologists also explain the passivity of human beings in the face of emergencies by citing the human tendency to believe that there is some order to the universe-that the guilty are punished, the innocent are rewarded, and justice prevails. Various studies indicate that most of us are given to this " just world thinking," and that we will rearrange our perception of people and events so that it seems as ~ though everyone gets what they deserve. Upon seeing an innocent per- j son punished, for example, most people will ad just their interpretation of what they have witnessed: the person being punished "must have done something," must somehow be inferior or dangerous or evil, or must be suffering because some higher cause is being served.
|
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|
|
|