| I wonder how much of this is that people don't know what to do. If we were listing the qualities that would encourage someone to help what would they be? 1) Believe that your intervention will do good/be effective. 2) Have a personal relationship with the victim. 3) Be thinking of the victim as a person rather than a piece of the scenery. 4) Perceive the risk to self (legal/physical) to be low. 5) Don't believe someone else will do it. 6) Don't believe that it's a setup where the 'victim' will turn on you. I'm not saying those are the things that matter, they're just the things that came to mind. And how many of them typically apply? This was a knife attack, and that probably takes care of 1 and 4. I've seen untrained people fighting in the street, and it's the equivalent of a monkey slinging shit. Add to that that a knife is less to do with careful application of skill - it's more constant. It's entirely possible, if people had intervened, we'd be talking about multiple people seriously injured, perhaps scarred for life, or killed. 2 doesn't apply, 3 could go either way, 5 might be the case - there were a lot of people there. 6, happens, but again might go either way. ... And there's a thought - did they see the knife? or did they just see two people having a domestic and screaming at each other? I imagine that might decrease the chances of anything happening. |