Don't shrink in the group - Essay Example

She has several publications on behavioural psychology which makes her an authority in the subject. She explains her thesis from a diagnosis perspective by suggesting that the inaction of a person in a group is not because of an individual’s or personal defect or deviance but more of the general outfit of group behaviour and the characteristics of people in groups. This is why if a person sees a hit and run accident or an infliction of injury by on a stranger by a thug or violent animal, they will respond immediately and some even risk their own safety for the stranger.

However if a group of people witnesses such a thing they will hesitate before any of them can marshal for help or take action to assist the victim. Her first reference point is the act of surprised neighbours who horrifically watch as one of their neighbours is stabbed right in front of her door step. This in its self amounts to a shrinkage as none of the neighbours who saw the whole scene made an attempt at helping or intervening. She extends her thesis to include the act of policemen watching as some of their colleagues beat up the perpetrator helplessly while they did nothing.

In an experiment done with school students, the rate of response to a fire of students seated in groups of three was much slower than that of the students who were seated individually. At the first sight of smoke pouring through the vents, the students seated individually rushed to check the vents and then dashed out of the class room. Those seated in groups sat in the room until it was fully filled with smoke and it became unbearable for them to remain in the room. The second experiment involving a staged loud crash and the screaming and mourning of a woman from a staged broken ankle recorded that the majority of individuals went to assist the woman while only 40 percent of those ion groups were bothered to respond to the cry for help.

This leads to her first hypothesis that for the victims there is no safety in numbers. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the group characteristics cause reluctance to the individual to take action. The individual is drawn to assume that there is no need to act because there is nothing to be done. This assumption therefore is responsible for the inaction of individuals in a group. For instance a group of people may gather at a scene of an accident and spend quite some time at the scene waiting for the police until they realise no one had actually called the police since they thought the other had dialled the emergency number whole in actual sense no one had done so.

The second explanation and justification to the hypothesis about group characteristic is that the members in a group fail to act due to the fear of humiliation rejection and ridicule. She alludes to the euphemism that society does not like people who go against the common decision however wrong it may be. “Do the moral thing and be disliked, humiliated, embarrassed and rejected” (Tavris 10). In my personal experience, I witnessed numerous fights between my friends and peers. The moral thing to do was to stand out and tell the fight off and separate them but since all others enjoyed the excitement I could not get myself to stand up against the crowd and deny them of the entertainment which was happening at the expense of the victims.

This was not because I was lazy or ill mannered or helpless. It was because I could not take the humiliation that would come after despite the fact that I was actually doing the right thing.