The bystander effect is described as a social psychological phenomenon which asserts that individuals would be less likely to offer help to someone in distress if there are other people nearby, because they will assume that someone else is going to offer the help and that they don't need to. It assumes that with the greater number of bystanders that it would become less likely that someone would offer help to a victim in distress.

After a review of real life violent situations that have occurred in the past however, it's now believed that the bystander effect could be completely wrong.

The bystander effect stems from a case back in the 1960s that involved a woman who was raped and murdered in her Queens neighborhood in New York, it was believed that there were several witnesses of the attack but no one had offered their help, it was reported that they had sat there and watched the attack for several minutes, at least half an hour without doing anything.

However, the claims surrounding how many witnesses might have seen the altercation have since been questioned, researchers admit there was an exaggeration. Although, the bystander effect experiment is one that has been replicated by researchers many times.

One fellow from Lancaster University , R. Philpot, now questions the bystander effect altogether and suggests that it might not be truthful.

They reviewed CCTV video surveillance footage of violent encounters in South Africa, the UK, and the Netherlands, and discovered that in 90 percent of cases there would be someone who would offer their help and they would try to intervene.

They discovered that with the more bystanders there were, that the likelihood of intervention would increase.

This goes contrary to what the bystander effect has proposed for years.

Philpot is hoping that people will find these results comforting, and be reassured in knowing that if there are more people around that there will be a greater chance of someone being willing to offer their help. They found a similar rate of intervention across all nations, which Philpot suggests demonstrates the natural inclination of people to help others that they see in distress.

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