How to avoid being victim of a cascade of information
This 1984 article by The New York Times discusses the murder of Kitty Genovese 20 years after it occurred. What made this event so famous is that ”for more than half an hour, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman” and did not call the police. The first reactions were of astonishment and repugnance toward the apathy of these people, seen as representative of the city of New York.
Later studies in psychology explained that those people were not particularly apathetic; instead, they behaved as many other people might have. This type of behavior has come to be understood by the term “Bystander Intervention”. The idea is that people are more likely to intervene in a situation that requires their immediate help than they are if they are part of a group of other potential helpers. In this view, each individual will assume that someone else is going to intervene and therefore they are exempted from doing so. Thought about in this way, it does not seem so apathetic to imagine someone seeing the murder and thinking ‘’I hope the police will be here soon!’’. Other reasons not to intervene depend on different situations. Someone may think that other people are more qualified than they are (as it may happen in a situation that requires medical help); or they may think that since nobody is intervening, the situation does not require an intervention (‘’I guess I am worrying too much and that guy on the ground is doing fine’’).
This reasoning can be seen as a cascade of information, starting from the first person that sees the event and does not intervene, to the following ones who base their behavior on previous people who consequently did not intervene. A difference from the type of cascade of information covered in class may be that the behavior does not happen as regularly as the model we’d discussed. For example: different people may acquire the same information at the same time. However, this difference does not change the output. Once a cascade is started, it takes someone particularly helpful to stop it and intervene, or someone aware of Bystander Intervention.
Because of this behavior, there is a useful piece of information everyone should be aware of. When seeking help, ask someone directly, making them clearly understand that their personal help is needed – thus stopping a potentially catastrophic information cascade.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/12/nyregion/20-years-after-the-murder-of-kitty-genovese-the-question-remains-why.html