It is often foolish to think you would respond differently [View All]

[Johonny]

The only thing I really learn from my sociology class was this: Every class our teacher would bring up a a different difficult social subject. Every class the majority of the class would explain how they "would react in that situation". Then we would go over studies that showed how people typically react in that situation. Then the class would end and most student would deny "they would ever have done that." Yet the studies would seem to show otherwise. Unless trained to avoid typical behavior you simply are not any less immune than subjects in these stories.

Take the baby in traffic in China. So many DUers were shocked. But why? It was a perfectly normal (tragic) response.
The people in China clearly suffered from Bystander effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

While people believe they would NEVER do this. Study after study shows you probably could and would in a similar situation. This is why we have emergency response training. Because if not told to react regardless of what everyone else is doing... people tend to all do nothing.

In this Penn State case, people will often defer to authoritative figures even if the figure tells you to harm someone. People will keep sending electric shocks to a screaming victim if an authoritative figure tells them too.

You can pretend you aren't human and won't act like a normal human or you can support training and education. We have sexual harassment training at work places now exactly to try to prevent people from being trapped/brow beaten into accepting the word of authority. Why do people need to be told to do this. Because countless studies tell us people do not naturally act the way so many people "think" they would act. When place in the right perfectly horrible situation you may act exactly in a horrible and unethical way that you think you would never do. You can either accept that and create systems to prevent it, or pretend you would almost certainly in that exact situation behave different. This probably won't be popular, but I think this is why I support education, regulations, training etc... because thinking you "know" right and wrong aren't enough to prevent you from an action you later find unethical and/or immoral.