We can learn, from the way the other witnesses are reacting, whether
the event is or is not an emergency.
What is easy to forget, though, is that everybody else observing the
event is likely to be looking for social evidence, too. And because we
all prefer to appear poised and unflustered among others, we are likely
to search for that evidence placidly, with brief, camouflaged glances at
those around us. Therefore everyone is likely to see everyone else
looking unruffled and failing to act. As a result, and by the principle of
social proof, the event will be roundly interpreted as a nonemergency.
This, according to Latané and Darley, is the state of pluralistic ignorance
“in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing
is wrong. Meanwhile, the danger may be mounting to the point where
a single individual, uninfluenced by the seeming calm of others, would
react.”^8
The fascinating upshot of Latané and Darley’s reasoning is that, for
the emergency victim, the idea of “safety in numbers” may often be
completely wrong. It might be that someone in need of emergency aid
would have a better chance of survival if a single bystander, rather than
a crowd, was present. To test this unusual thesis, Darley, Latané, their
students and colleagues performed a systematic and impressive program
of research that produced a clear set of findings. Their basic procedure
was to stage emergency events that were observed either by a single
individual or by a group of people. They then recorded the number of
times the emergency victim received help under those circumstances.
In their first experiment, a New York college student who appeared to
be having an epileptic seizure received help 85 percent of the time when
there was a single bystander present but only 31 percent of the time
with five bystanders present. With almost all the single bystanders
helping, it becomes difficult to argue that ours is “The Cold Society”
where no one cares for suffering others. Obviously it was something
about the presence of other bystanders that reduced helping to shameful
levels.
Other studies have examined the importance of social proof in causing
widespread witness “apathy.” They have done so by planting within
a group of witnesses to a possible emergency people who are rehearsed
to act as if no emergency were occurring. For instance, in another New
York—based experiment, 75 percent of lone individuals who observed
smoke seeping from under a door reported the leak; however, when
similar leaks were observed by three-person groups, the smoke was
reported only 38 percent of the time. The smallest number of bystanders
took action, though, when the three-person groups included two indi-
viduals who had been coached to ignore the smoke; under those condi-
tions, the leaks were reported only 10 percent of the time. In a similar
102 / Influence