You’re probably aware of the experiment performed by Stanley Milgram in which volunteers were asked by men in white coats to administer what they believed to be electric shocks to another person, who they could not see, but could hear, from behind a screen. Around two-thirds of the volunteers agreed to deliver what they were told to be potentially fatal shocks to the subject, who they could hear screaming and begging them to stop. What they didn’t know was the person they were agreeing to inflict this on was in fact an actor. Although now questioned, Milgram’s findings remain the famous of a series of studies that have attempted to highlight the willingness of humans to bow to authority figures and comply with group norms irrespective of what their own morals might tell them.
One of the most telling of these was carried out by two American researchers called John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. The two men’s work was partly inspired by a notorious, now partly mythologised 1964 American murder in which a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death by a serial rapist and murderer. The murder took place over a period of around half an hour, during which a number of witnesses who watched the crime from their windows failed to help the victim.
What Darley and Latane found was that while solitary individuals will typically intervene if another person is in need of help, that tendency diminishes proportionately with the number of people who are present. In some situations, a large group of bystanders may fail to help a person who obviously needs help.
Darley and Latane first demonstrated this so-called ‘bystander effect’ in the laboratory. One of the studies they used was to place a subject alone in a room who is then told he can communicate with other subjects through an intercom. In reality, he is just listening to an audio recording and is told his microphone will be off until it is his turn to speak. During the recording, one subject suddenly pretends he is having a heart attack or seizure. The study found that how long the subject waits before alerting the experimenter varies inversely with the number of other subjects. In some cases, the subject never told the experimenter at all.
The link to groupthink
This type of behaviour and the contrast between the behaviour of people as individuals and the same people’s behaviour in groups has an ongoing fascination for social scientists. In organisations this is often defined as groupthink, based in something called the Abilene paradox, a famous thought experiment which demonstrates how individuals will go along with an idea that they think is wrong or which they don’t want to do for some other reason.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good[/perfectpullquote]
This is far more than a thought experiment of course. The thinking is most evidently and often cited in reference to the Nazis, most notoriously in the case of Adolf Eichmann for whom the phrase the ‘banality of evil’ was coined by the great Hannah Arendt, whose work has never been more relevant than it is right now. “The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good”, she wrote in her final book The Life of the Mind in 1978.
In the business world, groups of people have gone along with poor behaviour, often while making claims about their corporate social responsibility. So apparent is this that Joel Bakan produced a book and film a few years ago based on the central thesis that organisations are inherently psychotic in that they are designed to pursue narrow goals in a way that allows them to ignore what appears to be basic morality. The belief is now widespread, although some companies such as Greggs – of all of them – are doing what they can to challenge the assumption. Others make claims about corporate social responsibility that may or may not stand up to closer scrutiny.
Other commentators have pointed to this as evidence that companies are behaving in a morally neutral way and that modish efforts to pursue goals of corporate social responsibility are not really what companies should be about. But increasingly they are. And although in some respects this is rightly criticised as greenwashing as a marketing tool, many companies and individuals behave in a commendably altruistic manner. Most eye-catching in this respect have been Warren Buffett who is reported to have given away billions of dollars in shares to various charitable foundations and Bill and Melinda Gates whose philanthropic Foundation has assets of over $50 billion. His recently deceased Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is said to have donated $2 billion to various causes.
Of course few of us can afford to match this but we do have the potential to make smaller differences, even when those around us are not as prepared to take action. We can break ourselves out of groupthink, the bystander effect and pluralistic ignorance and whatever variants of these ideas we might use to describe why good people don’t always act ethically. Darley and Latane, the two men responsible for proving the existence of this sort of behaviour also proved how we can escape it. There are five steps.
- Notice something is happening
- Interpret this as something where help is needed
- Assume personal responsibility
- Decide what action to take
- Take it
Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.
January 9, 2020
Putting the responsibility into personal and corporate social responsibility 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Environment, Wellbeing
One of the most telling of these was carried out by two American researchers called John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. The two men’s work was partly inspired by a notorious, now partly mythologised 1964 American murder in which a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death by a serial rapist and murderer. The murder took place over a period of around half an hour, during which a number of witnesses who watched the crime from their windows failed to help the victim.
What Darley and Latane found was that while solitary individuals will typically intervene if another person is in need of help, that tendency diminishes proportionately with the number of people who are present. In some situations, a large group of bystanders may fail to help a person who obviously needs help.
Darley and Latane first demonstrated this so-called ‘bystander effect’ in the laboratory. One of the studies they used was to place a subject alone in a room who is then told he can communicate with other subjects through an intercom. In reality, he is just listening to an audio recording and is told his microphone will be off until it is his turn to speak. During the recording, one subject suddenly pretends he is having a heart attack or seizure. The study found that how long the subject waits before alerting the experimenter varies inversely with the number of other subjects. In some cases, the subject never told the experimenter at all.
The link to groupthink
This type of behaviour and the contrast between the behaviour of people as individuals and the same people’s behaviour in groups has an ongoing fascination for social scientists. In organisations this is often defined as groupthink, based in something called the Abilene paradox, a famous thought experiment which demonstrates how individuals will go along with an idea that they think is wrong or which they don’t want to do for some other reason.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good[/perfectpullquote]
This is far more than a thought experiment of course. The thinking is most evidently and often cited in reference to the Nazis, most notoriously in the case of Adolf Eichmann for whom the phrase the ‘banality of evil’ was coined by the great Hannah Arendt, whose work has never been more relevant than it is right now. “The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good”, she wrote in her final book The Life of the Mind in 1978.
In the business world, groups of people have gone along with poor behaviour, often while making claims about their corporate social responsibility. So apparent is this that Joel Bakan produced a book and film a few years ago based on the central thesis that organisations are inherently psychotic in that they are designed to pursue narrow goals in a way that allows them to ignore what appears to be basic morality. The belief is now widespread, although some companies such as Greggs – of all of them – are doing what they can to challenge the assumption. Others make claims about corporate social responsibility that may or may not stand up to closer scrutiny.
Other commentators have pointed to this as evidence that companies are behaving in a morally neutral way and that modish efforts to pursue goals of corporate social responsibility are not really what companies should be about. But increasingly they are. And although in some respects this is rightly criticised as greenwashing as a marketing tool, many companies and individuals behave in a commendably altruistic manner. Most eye-catching in this respect have been Warren Buffett who is reported to have given away billions of dollars in shares to various charitable foundations and Bill and Melinda Gates whose philanthropic Foundation has assets of over $50 billion. His recently deceased Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is said to have donated $2 billion to various causes.
Of course few of us can afford to match this but we do have the potential to make smaller differences, even when those around us are not as prepared to take action. We can break ourselves out of groupthink, the bystander effect and pluralistic ignorance and whatever variants of these ideas we might use to describe why good people don’t always act ethically. Darley and Latane, the two men responsible for proving the existence of this sort of behaviour also proved how we can escape it. There are five steps.
Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.