Studies On Bystander Phenomena

The bystander phenomenon is an important factor in building a harmonious society, which has been attracting the attention of people. In recent years, no one helped the old man fell down occurs frequently, and there are individual reasons and social reasons. If let it go, the society will develop unhealthily. Therefore, it is important to analyze the essential cause of the bystander phenomenon. And to find effective measures to control the phenomenon is one of the key issues to promote the development of harmonious and healthy society. This paper takes the phenomenon of "no one helped the old men fell down" as examples, and discusses the reasons of the phenomenon from the bystanders and the old men’s aspects and puts forward the corresponding countermeasures. The paper aims to reduce the bystander phenomenon, improve public moral responsibility and spread social positive energy widely. And in order to build a harmonious society, everyone should keep it in mind that "Expend the respect of the aged in one’s family to that of other families."This paper gives its exposition from the following four parts:The first part, this paper describes the definition and psychological mechanism of bystander phenomenon. Start with the event of "no one helped the old men fell down" which appeared in the newspapers, the paper compares the differences of people’s current and traditional ideas about morality to pay emphases on moral construction. And the bystander phenomenon is put forward. Then this paper summarizes the definition of the bystander phenomenon, which is called "the bystander effect" in psychology, namely in a dangerous situation, the individual knows the other is threatened by property or life and needs help, but turns a blind eye to it. And finally the paper analysis the psychological mechanism of the bystander phenomenon, that is, the individual has experienced from the attention to motivation phase, the assessment phase, the psychological defense phase, and resulting in behavior eventually.The second part, this paper discusses the negative and positive consequences through the analysis on the phenomenon of bystander, so people can understand the bystander phenomenon deeply. Positive effects include:the prevention of fraud; to speed up social revolution and signal features. Negative effects include personal aspects and social aspects, which mainly refer to the impacts on moral norms and interpersonal relationships.The third part, this paper identifies the causes of this phenomenon from the individual and social angles. The individual aspect includes the olds fell down and the bystanders, with more attention on the bystanders’psychology. And there are very profound and complex social reasons of this phenomenon, such as the imperfect of the social system, social value orientation deviation and interpersonal economization, etc.The fourth part, this thesis explains the measures to reduce bystander phenomenon. On individual level, it is important to arouse the individual consciousness in public and improve their moral cultivation. On social level, we should strengthen the moral education and improve the social security system, the legal system, and social reward system and supervision mechanism.It is a long-term and difficult project to eliminate the bystander phenomenon. It calls for the joint efforts of individuals and society.