Why didn't anyone help this poor guy?

[easilydoable]

So I was on my daily route this morning and saw a bruised blind man standing near a construction area. I ran to him as fast as I could and when I reached him, I noticed that he had a scrape of blood on his forehead and he looked very confused and nervous. I slowly held his hand and told him that I would take him to his destination. I was carrying about 25 helium balloons in my hands so it was a bit difficult but I managed.

It was a busy street and as we took a couple of steps I noticed a huge crowd of people standing at a bus stop looking at me with a sigh of relief. These people were waiting for their NYC bound bus which arrives every 10 minutes.

So my question is, why didn't any of them help this poor man? Would it have been so bad if they were late to work by 10 minutes? Why were they all waiting for 'superman' to arrive when anyone who can see and walk could have helped him?

-Samir

[mikecane]

Sorry to break it to you, but some are con artists and people have been burned too many times.

1) I helped a blind guy once. It was a ruse to try to get money out of me. He could have found his way easily.

2) For several months, there was this young guy who seemed to have a horribly twisted body begging for change daily. One day we saw him walking down the street perfectly normal. There was never anything wrong with him.

It's not lack of compassion at all. It's being sick of being taken for a sucker. The evil isn't in the people wary of helping. It's in those who faked the need for help.

EDITED to add: The above is not academic. I live in NYC, where these cons flourish.

[sek]

Lets say i was one time incredibly stupid, it did cost me 50€ and since then i never trusted anyone on the street.

We have taxes for social care, that is what i pay for not being bothered on the street. If someone asks me to call the abulance or the police i do it, but don't believe anything else.

From Germany.

[Robin_Message]

Bystander effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect)—since no-one else is helping, you don't want to, and since there are all these other people here, maybe they should be the ones to help. Maybe one of them is better trained to help than you.

Inconvenience—trivial sure, but can easily be rationalised as "who wants to be late to work in this climate?"

And personally I'd be worried about offering to help a random, confused, nervous looking person with blood on them. I would like to think I would help, but it would worry me.

[jgrahamc]

Sometimes you are the person who has to help. What the others do is their business. Keep being you.

Some time ago I came across a dying man in the street and ended up doing CPR on him. There were also plenty of other people who could have helped.

http://blog.jgc.org/2010/10/you-never-think-youll-have-to-do...

[smoyer]

Because somebody else should/could/would do it? There's actually a pretty small percent of us (I hope I would have your compassion) that will take action when part of a crowd, but many of those people would have helped if they were the only one there. Sad huh?

[saghul]

In my last year of university I had a class on ethics and I learned the case of Kitty Genovese, a woman who was stabbed to death in New York. Many people watched but nobody helped.

This "phenomenon" is called "dilution of responsibility", that is, people don't do anything, because nobody else is doing it. I guess what you observed was exactly this.

Found a link describing the case here: http://www.talsico.com/newsletters/newsletter6.htm

[burgerbrain]

Because everybody else was also thinking "Why isn't anyone helping this poor guy?".

The better question is of course "why aren't I helping this guy". Of course you did ask that as well, but most people don't. It's not in their nature.

[Joeboy]

Well done for stopping to help.

[bmelton]

In many cases, this is a matter of priority. Most people either aren't interested or don't want to subject themselves potentially dangerous.

Some people might be more inclined to question your insane abuse of helium balloons while we are in the midst of a helium crisis. Why didn't anyone mention that to you? Probably because in most cases, advice like that is discarded or met with argument. Most people would rather not say anything and perhaps shake their heads than to even bring it up.

You also admit that you had to get close to notice the scrape of blood. If nobody else got that close, he probably wouldn't have appeared to be in any danger and hence, likely did not need help.

There is (what I assume to be) a homeless man in the neighborhood I'm currently in who every day visits a reflective sheet-glass window and poses, as if he is checking out his figure or how he looks for a substantial portion of the day (e.g., more than an hour) while he smokes cigarettes.

Perhaps he needs _help_ in the vague sense, but he isn't in any imminent danger that I can tell, and as I'm just passing through, I am not in a position to help him in any permanent way, nor am I inclined to contribute financially to his nicotine habit.