Perhaps an explanation of underdevelopment

Source: "The Impassive Bystander: Someone Is Hurt, in Need of Compassion. Is It Human Instinct to Do Nothing?" by DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post, July 16, 2008.

Unfortunately there are many examples of a person in trouble -- hit by a car, attacked in the street, falling unconscious in a building -- in which many people observe the person in need, and no one does anything about it.

Sociologists and psychologists have long studied what is known as bystander behavior. They say people are often unsure how to react to such events because they have difficulty processing what they are seeing. Witnesses to tragedy, especially when events are uncertain, often look around first.

If no one else is moving, individuals have a tendency to mimic the unmoving crowd. Although we might think otherwise, most of us would not have behaved much differently from the people we see in these recent videos, experts say. Deep inside, we are herd animals, conformists.....

"The larger question about the culture of indifference has a lot to do with bystander behavior," says H. Wesley Perkins, a professor of sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in Geneva, N.Y. "The bystander phenomenon is generated by the perception that other people are not doing anything about it, therefore I shouldn't either."

After the event is over and comes to greater public light, "people think everybody is mean and cruel-hearted and doesn't care," Perkins says. "But much of the bystander phenomenon happens because people are looking on and thinking, if they don't see someone else coming to the person's aid, then the person must not be in trouble."

Comment: Developing nations often fail to progress because of corruption, bad policies created by incompetent officials, civil war, war between states, etc. These are all problems that people stand by and allow to continue. Perhaps is we were to reduce bystander behavior, people would step in an solve development problems.

How do we train people to overcome their herd instinct so that they will step forward? Perhaps this is an especially important challenge for educators and education systems! The media can do their part as well, providing communications in a variety of form that show heros in practice, and make clear that they are "everyman". JAD