Title:
Chapter 4: In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
Summary:
This chapter is about an experiment done by 2 psychologists, John Darley, and Bibb Latane. They got their idea for the experiment from a murder in NY. It was not the murder that actually caught their attention though, it was the fact that there were 38 witnesses, the murder happened over a 35 minute period, and none of the witnesses called the police or even went outside their apartment to help. Darley and Latane's experiment used a faked seizure to test the subjects reactions. The subject was placed in a room with a microphone, and told they would talk for 2 minutes about life in college, then the next person in a different room would talk, and they would listen, with a group of talkers taking turns. Actually, all of the voices were prerecorded. One of the recordings had the voice act like it was having a seizure, and Darley and Latane recorded the results.
Discussion:
I thought that this was a very sad story about the murder in NY. However, I have seen their conclusions often. It reminds me of a TV show, Doctor Who. He travels around in a blue police box, and when asked why no one notices it, he said that if you put something that is odd in plain view, people don't want to be a part of it. I think that this relates to the diffusion of responsibility because they think that if it was bad, someone else will deal with it.
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