Why Did No One Help Sanin Hasan?

Sanin Hasim (30)

Many may have seen this news. It is really shocking to know that when the miscreants left the place the rickshaw-puller asked for help to take Sanin Hasim to the nearest hospital but no one responded. You may say that those people lacked humanity. But this might not be the case. It may be because of “bystander problem”. 

This human behavior first came in media in 1964 when Kitty Genovese of New York was chased for half an hour and stabbed while 38 of her neighbors were watching. No one called the police. That incident led to the identification of a critical aspect of human behavior- How do people respond to an emergency situation? Numbers of researches have been conducted and the common conclusion was whether one will offer help in an emergency situation largely depends of the number of people witnessing the situation.

If many people are watching then one person’s individual responsibility to act in that situation gets diffused. One may think that others will act and when no-one is acting then he/she may think that this is not a problem at all and perceive that he/she also should not act. So, here, the problem was not that the people lacked humanity to offer help to Sanin Hasim but there were many around who could offer help. 

So, what should we do in such situation?  If you ever face such situation it is wise to ask for help by indicating individual person in the crowd rather than shouting to the crowd. It gives that specific person a sense of personal responsibility to come forward and act. And, when he/she will act others will join afterwards.