This video shows a traffic accident, which happened in May 2008 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. We see an elderly man as he is hit by a car and lie on the ground remains. More than a minute nothing happened. People walk past the scene of an accident, cars are happy their way, a scooter driver makes even around an elegant bow to the seriously injured, only to disappear afterwards. Eventually the police come, until then no one has even approached the poor man only. All stop and stare only.
shocking, right? The police chief looked for even prompted to say : "We have lost our moral compass." But is that really so? Well, not necessarily. This behavior, however unpleasant it may seem to us, is in some sense "normal". For there is something can produce some mighty, the good people to do evil. The great physicist Steven Weinberg once said: "For good people to do evil things, that takes religion." I would like to add something: "... or situation".
The incredible power of the situation is the psychologist for about a half a century known. Many experiments have been performed, which showed how far people in order to adapt to the prevailing circumstances, not to attract attention, "normal" to act, so to be like. It all started innocently, as Solomon Asch 1951 demonstrated that subjects shown a simple question answered incorrectly only because the rest of the group in which they were (all consecrated men of straw), also a wrong answer. If it all say, I say that too. Asch was later the doctor father of Stanley Milgram, who shocked 1962 World . In his experiment people were ready to torture another on a partly sadistic manner and to bring even in danger of death because it "required the experiment and did the experimenter, as if everything is fine. Further, it was nine years later with the Prison Experiment by Philip Zimbardo , a college friend Milgram, in the normal students were brutal beasts, because you put them in uniforms and improvised in a Prison guards than can work. The top of the situational-related madness occupied psychologists Darley and Latane 1968: In its attempt , 90% of people willing to defend even their own lives in great danger, just because it was appropriate to the situation behavior. They sat in a room suddenly invaded the vast amounts of smoke. Since the other people in the room (initiates) showed no reaction, also beat the subjects no alarm and remained sitting in the room. Had it been a real smoke, they would be stifled without exception.
The force of the situation is so immense. That just Philip Zimbardo, author of the prison experiment suggests, therefore, a new Definition of a "hero": a hero is not as we imagine it to us, a knight on horseback with flowing hair, good looks and superhuman strength. He is not a super-or Spiderman. He does not like a fallen on subway tracks unconscious student en after jumping in to save him. Held to be, as Zimbardo says very "banal" . It is enough if you are a Average person who helps once in a lifetime, if it is necessary to break through the walls of the situation-induced rigidity and indifference, does something that does not make others, and as an old on the road lying injured man when onlookers stare only. It is so easy when thinking about it. People should control a situation, not vice versa.
