Part 1 The - "Why Didn't Anyone Help Her?" Idaho episode.

Emily and Ashley get into the "why didn't anyone help her" event in Idaho and the bystander effect. We encourage you to listen to this episode and share it with a friend. We are better together, especially as women.

Please head to the chat and ask your questions and drop comments for a follow up episode

TW: Violence, Domestic Violence 

https://www.patreon.com/chats/184564adfbce4c188055f0d32897533a

Show notes: 

0:00-1:00 Intro 

1:00 Ashley’s favorite current tiktok - women empowering women 

2:00 Societal pressure for women finding a partner

4:00 Kids and phones 

4:00-6:00 WTF with Marc Maron and phones 

8:30-20:00 Let's Chat Coeur d’Alene Idaho 

20:00 Diffusion of responsibility 

23:00 Kitty Genovese murder 

26:00 Return to Idaho town hall - Do you raise your hand when no one else does? 

28:00 You can change the social norm of a situation 

29:00 Seizure disorder and script 

31:00 Fear for our own safety

32:00 Fear of being wrong 

33:00 How do we get the message to the people who actually matter?

34:00 Ashley fell into exactly what is wrong with the patriarchy 

35:00 Netflix Belle Gibson doc 

37:00 -40:00 Raising kids in community

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Tik tok video: UN Unty Tan 

https://www.history.com/topics/crime/kitty-genovese

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Bystander-Effect-in-Non-Emergency-Situations%3A-Cox-Adam/2d8a412dab1aa0622b7345928687fd13a68b90a7

https://academy4sc.org/video/the-smoky-room-experiment-trust-your-instincts/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese

https://www.simplypsychology.org/kitty-genovese.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/us/idaho-woman-removed-town-hall.html

Transcript

Project 60

 Hi besties! We plan to drop a follow up episode next week. Please take the time when you are done listening to share your comments and ask your questions so we can respond thoughtfully to all of them. You can head to our Patreon and ask your questions and share your comments there. You can send us a message straight from this episode, or you can head to our Instagram page and send us a message there at the Creepy Book Club. Thank you for listening and being a part of our community. Hi, I'm Emily. I'm Ashley and this is books with your besties. Please visit our Patreon to see how you could support the show and help us keep the lights on. Hi besties, it's Ashley and M, we are back for another week and we're kind of doing a catch up with us. We have a lot to talk about. There was something that happened and Emily and I had a conversation about it, and I feel like it just needs to be a bigger conversation. Not that happened between us. That happened in the world. Right? M yes, yes. So before we get into the meat of that and the main thing, I saved three stories that I want to tell you that usually I would just FaceTime and tell you because I want to talk about them. Does that sound good? Yes. Okay. Number one, stop me if you've seen this TikTok and just say I already saw it, leave me alone and I will, I will connect or I will link this TikTok in our show notes. Okay. Have you seen the TikTok about the girl whose friends showed up in their car blasting Destiny's Child outside of her house? Oh, you. Yes. Yeah. You saw it. Yeah. Okay. We didn't talk about it. I wanted to talk to you about it because I felt like it was such a powerful testimony to just women showing up for one another. Oh, yeah, I, I thought it was awesome. I mean, it was the sister and some other friends, and the gal was postpartum and had like one week and had been acting really strange and had blocked them all. And so they were very concerned about her mental health and her well-being. And so they went and they would not take no for an answer. They were like going to break into her room to make sure she was okay. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, it was just the extent to where. So at first when I watched it, I wasn't sure where it was going and I was like, oh my God. Her friends broke into her house and then into her bedroom where she answered and like, went into the closet with her baby. And it was it was a stitch. And the TikToker just said, you know, we could all only wish to have friends like this. Like friends that did not take no, I'm okay for an answer. They knew maybe her mental health wasn't where it needed to be, and they physically went to check on her. Yeah, it's so good. I thought it was beautiful. Okay, well, then the second thing, we interviewed Megan Collins this week and there's no spoilers about the book here, but we got into a fascinating conversation about just the societal pressures of women needing to find a partner. That why is just being a woman, especially if you choose to to be single and even be single with kids. Why? Why is that kind of seen as less than? And Megan was saying she was single for a long time. And she's like, my friends would try to include me, but the outside world sees you as the fifth wheel. So why is women, are we not seen as enough if we don't have? Yeah, we definitely aren't seen as enough. And we also, um, feel like we're. Yeah, we can't be included or things like that. We, I actually my family was invited to dinner by another family that were good friends with a few weeks ago, and I was like, oh, Dan's. Unfortunately, Steve is gone for the next hour having drinks with a coworker or so, and they wrote back and they said, you know, we like being with you too. And I was like, oh my gosh, it really made me feel so good. So the three of us went out for drinks and dinner, and then Steve joined us later with the kids. And so that was really nice. Um, I wonder if men feel that same pressure though, or feel that same way. That's what I don't really know. So I don't know if it's a issue just for women or if it's kind of just a general issue of feeling untethered if you're not partnered. Right? Absolutely. And just the value that other people put on you or you put on yourself by feeling like, am I not wanted? Am I not worthy of a partner? When Meghan made the point, she's like, I love my husband, he's great, but I'm a full person and I would really be okay without him in the big picture. So why is it just that we, even as humans, might not be seen as enough if we don't have a partner? Yeah. It was, it was awesome. And this is the third thing, and this is a total has nothing to do with what we're talking about today. But it just made me sad. So I'm telling you this because it made me sad. Kids have phones, my kids both have phones. And our rule in our house was you don't get a phone until we need you to have one. And now both of our kids are at the point where we need them to have them because they travel, they do things without us, and we just felt like it was getting to be too much texting other parents to be like, hey, can you tell? Can you tell Durham this? But one of Durham's friends was with him yesterday and they went and played for a long time, came back inside, both grabbed their phones, which is fine. That's a natural human thing to do unfortunately right now. And Durham's friend goes, oh, I have no notifications. And he got upset. And luckily it was a good time for I'm close enough with this other child for us to have a conversation about, like, you just played outside for hours with your friends. That's what matters. Who cares if you came back and you don't have texts or likes or they're not on social media anyway, it just made me sad because I thought, we're in this world where phones are really seen as a necessity. But for a 12 year old to to be worried about not having notifications. Yeah, it's just sad. It's kind of. It's funny because I really feel like it's probably different based on just where you live, who, where your kid goes to school, like who they're friends with. Because I am in this, you know, my son is 11. He'll be 12 soon, though. Um, in this pod of folks who. None of the kids. There's only one kid of his friends who has a phone. The rest either have a watch or nothing. And I think they all now are getting a watch so they can communicate with each other just to be like, do you want to play? Um, and they can get on their iPads, some of them, and connect that like a group chat. So they have that texting capability. But it's so nice to not have them have it full, full accessibility to that yet. And I totally see that. So I just I'm I'm really just saying that I'm thankful that we happen to be with folks who this hasn't become an issue. I listen to a really good podcast today, and I am going to send the link to it to you. So it's WTF with Marc Maron and he was interviewing Chris Hayes. Chris Hayes is a commentator and journalist on MSNBC who just wrote a book, and a lot of the book has to do with using our phones for a thing that we should be using people for, like attention like that kind of stuff. And Chris said he thinks, and I'm hopeful for this. As someone that uses my phone to run businesses beyond group chats with people I love. Talk to you. But Chris was saying, I think we're going to see a swing back to like restaurants or places being like, this is a phone free space. Put your phone in this cubby, this is a phone free. And he's like, I think we're going to see more of a swing back to being more intentional about how intentional about how you get feedback and how you spend your time with with people. And anyway, listen to the podcast. It was a fascinating discussion about the phone being a necessary evil, but also the ways that which it's really damaging us. Yeah, it's interesting because I think about like our book club retreat, right in Arizona, and we were never on our phones, never like one picture, you and I, one we took one picture together like, I don't even I don't even take photos. That's the thing is, I really love to be in the moment when I'm with other people. So I just have very few photos and even of my kids, it's so bad. Sometimes I'm like, oh my gosh, I should take a picture. Um, and I really love that. I, I love having the memories, but I also just really. Reflected on how little we used our phone at Book Club Retreat, and how nice that was, and how much I enjoyed that. I mean, of course, a huge piece of this. And then we can get off this topic, though, that Chris was saying was basically the social media piece. He's like, I'm not saying phones are bad, like you and I. Getting to FaceTime as much as we want every day is I love that. Like that is helpful for my mental health. I hope it's helpful for yours. It's a way to connect. But he was like, we are where we are not to go into politics again, but because of social media, because of this access to information that people were never meant to have and access misinformation. So all of that aside, it's a great podcast. And I just got sad that the little boy was worried about notifications. That is interesting, I know. So do you want to get into talking about why we thought it would be good to to film an episode on this? Sure. Okay, I can start. I'm talking a lot, but I think I need to start because I started this conversation with you, and I think that my reaction in the community I saw using my phone was the reaction that a lot of people had. And until you and I then talked about it, I hadn't even thought of everything you talked. Hopefully you have seen. Not hopefully, but I'm sure you guys have seen. There was an instance at a Coeur d'Alene town hall where a woman was executing her right of free speech and was pretty forcefully removed. You think that's enough of a recap for people who've seen it? I'd say so. And we can try to put a link up, though I'm sure they're ever changing. So you can just Google the. Idaho town hall woman removed and and by forcibly pretty forcibly. I mean she was absolutely like forcibly held by her arms and legs by multiple men who were non uniformed. Right? Just community men dragged her physically out of the venue for shouting, is this a town hall or is this a lecture? A couple of times during, uh, during they it was supposed to be a town hall and the speakers were just speaking the whole time and not actually allowing for community input. And so it became sort of chaotic, it seemed. And she was yelling loudly. And that's on the video at the beginning when they came and said she was a disruption. Um, I will say they there is um, she's asking, who are you men? Who are you? You won't even identify yourself. So these are just random men dragging her out. It's very disturbing. And actually, you may not have seen it. My husband had not seen it because he is not online much. He doesn't go on social media. So if you're off of social media, then you might not have come across this, but it. I sent it to him. I think it's something to see and just sort of know. It's it's an it's a good informative video. So I saw it because it was being shared everywhere. And my gut reaction and of course I said something about it was, I'll just say the word. I felt borderline disgust that nobody helped her. I was like, why did no one help this woman? And my my version of quote unquote help was literally like, why did no one step in and help her? Why did everybody just stand there? Why didn't anyone help this woman? And and probably because that was my reaction. That's the reaction I was seeing from a lot of the people in my online and in real life community, like, the people I run with were just like, why did no one help this woman? So then I asked you and I even tagged you, I think, in a video, and I said, I need you to talk to me about the bystander effect, if that's what it's called, because I'm really confused about what happened and didn't happen here. And then we have this conversation that you'll share with our community here. And I left feeling so informed, educated, empowered and like. I feel like I have a path forward for if I'm in a scenario like this. So I'm going to soften you. Just you teach us everything. Well, I, I think the conversation we had was so good because I think I just pressed you because I saw the same things on social media. I saw a lot of videos saying, how could no one help? And I'm going to take this one step further. How would could no women help her? Right. And that was very unsettling to me the whole time. I rewatched the video this morning, and at the first time I had seen it, I had noted these, these things. But you said to me in our phone conversation, you said, I'm so horrified. No one helped her. And I said, I'm not. And you said, you're not. And I said no. And then we kind of got into it and and I said, okay, why did no one help her? How how? So this there's two layers to this. The first is the men who did the crime here and the speakers who allowed it. That is who the problem are. And maybe the broader government that is encouraging and allowing this behavior, whether that's local or state or federally, that is who the problem is here to point the finger. At the crowd and particularly at the women in the crowd, as the problem is a societal norm that we have created, full of misogyny and and patriarchal backing. Why are the women, the people we are focusing on being problematic here? That is it. It's infuriating to me that we continue to perpetuate that. So the conversation that we are having around this from the jump really rubbed me the wrong way. Not I don't mean you and I. I mean society like culturally, society societally. The second thing is we say, and I saw tons of comments because I went through comments on this, what are people saying? Is anybody saying you wouldn't have done anything differently? No. People are saying, oh, I would have been in there like a mama bear. No you wouldn't, no you wouldn't. You're sitting in a hostile environment where there are multiple, what, 4 to 5 men at one point in this are forcibly assisting to remove this woman. And what is your expectation that another woman stands up and gets herself physically involved and is going to fist fight the men? Because guess what? It's really easy to sit on the sidelines and pretend like we know how we'll behave. But that's not what research shows we'll do one and two, I think, you know, in your core, are you actually going to physically fight with these men? And how many of you are there? How many of you are there? And when I asked you that, you were like, of course not. Okay, so they didn't physically fight. They didn't try to drag her back the other way. Right? Okay. You know, what they did do? Used their voices. I listened today and those women said, you're hurting her. You're hurting her. Okay. They also said, wait, you're gonna arrest her? For what? Okay, these are quotes, right? Things from the video. There's more. They. They used their voices in opposition while she was using her voice to say, identify yourself. Who are you? They used their voices. The second thing is, we are very critical of people recording. Oh, don't just record. Do something. Okay. What else can you do in that moment? You can use your voice. You can get up and physically fight if you want to. I think there's to no avail. I think to no purpose. Um, maybe I'm wrong, but that crowd sure didn't look like they were all on her side. So you are going to be outnumbered. And these men are clearly not afraid to perpetuate violence against women. So recording is a service in that moment when you have nothing else recording and not just recording, not just recording. Posting it publicly on platforms for it to be seen and shared. For those men's faces to be known for the man who is speaking to be known for the conversation, to start, for the cautionary tale of what can we do in future experiences. So I will tell you a lot about the bystander effect today. I can tell you the story of where it came from, how we first even named the bystander effect. Well, essentially like the kind of the integral story behind it. And I can also tell you about some of the research on it about helping, but we do not help when we're in crowds for a lot of reasons, but not all of them are because we are weak or just pathetic or, you know, diffused responsibility. A lot of it is self-preservation and fear, and I can't imagine how afraid and how traumatizing that was for the women sitting near her who were feeling on her side. So we are focused very much on the wrong thing here. We are so focused on the women not doing what we also would not have, but like to believe that we would or think that we would. Instead, we should be looking at this and going, that is awful, actually. Thank you to the woman herself for not just being complicit and closing her mouth and leaving, but demonstrating how serious this culture is that we are in against women, how men will take it as far as they did, and that we are not safe from these kinds of things. One thank you to her and to let's use it as a discussion topic of what can we do in these situations? How can we act? How can we resist meaningfully? So what are the things we could do? So I'd love to start there and just talk about what do you think could have been action that you would have liked to see as an intervention if you were a woman actually sitting there in the next row or somewhere nearby? Thank you for saying everything that you said to me when I was like, okay, now you have to say it all again to the people. Because after we talked, I felt I didn't feel, I didn't feel bad for my reaction that I had to it, but I felt like, oh my gosh, I didn't take 10s to look at all of the things you said. An even bigger picture. I thought. I just had this conversation with Durham three weeks ago, where he asked me if he sees someone fighting at school, what should he do and what do you think? I said to him? Out of it. I said don't. Don't try to break it up. Don't go fight. And I told him, if you have your phone, you can record it, because that feels like exactly what you said, that you are then helping. Anyway, I'm like, here I and I wouldn't if I were in that situation. I'm not putting myself in physical harm to try to help someone. And also, if those men are so emboldened to do that, they're they're not going to think twice about hurting me as well. Right? In fact, you're just a tiny little nother annoyance. And you know what? I'd put money on it that there were a bunch of men sitting at crowd, chomping at the bit to have their opportunity. They weren't needed there. They sure would have liked to be in there. So go ahead, give them somebody else to wrangle. Right? Because then you're escalating the situation even more. You're giving them a reason to get more violent. You're giving them a reason to use weapons because they're in a state where that's okay. So when you ask the question like, what else would you have want done? I don't have an answer because as you explain these things, the things people could do to both. Advocate for her show what happened to her, but stay safe themselves. They did? Yeah. I think the one thing that we didn't see, and I don't know, is you could stand up and say, I'll go with her, I'll go with her. I will take her. Right. Get your hands off her. Let me let me go to. But that's a I mean, that's all like I've had a week to think about it kind of response. Those are the kinds of things that we can prepare. Right. So those pre-planned responses, which I've known, we talked about how we've talked about before, that could be the kind of thing where you're like, okay, I'm gonna go with the person. I'm going to go, I'm going to show solidarity by leaving with them in some way. I mean, hopefully it would never get there again. I think we need to also look at men in the room who knew that was wrong and didn't stand up and do anything about it, because they physically could have actually been more threatening or more of a match. I'm thinking in a situation where someone's having a medical episode, people say, is there a doctor? Can someone help her? So in a way, you could also use your voice to to try to get a man's attention. Which I hate to say that, but men in that situation could be bigger and stronger and physically help. So saying, can anyone help her? Why is no one helping her? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the, the reality is these atrocities happen, you know, and I know on our phone call, the other thing I asked you, as I said, are you actually if you see a man beating a woman, are you actually going to stand in between them and try to break that up? Yeah. No, I'm going to call the police. I'm going to be like, that's the police's job. I'm going to call the police. Right. So the answer is often you're going to call the police or call for help somehow. You know, that's really complex for people too, especially people of color. Calling the police is. Definitely can feel like a not safe thing to do in tenuous situations, so it makes it even more complex. So it's easy to say, oh, call the cops, you know? But there's nuance to that as well. I would say, if you see, you know, a domestic dispute, that's quite obvious. Calling the police is the right thing to do. I think oftentimes we don't know how to act. And I think if we actually reflected on our day to day lives, there were probably a lot of times that we heard something, saw something, something was off and strange and we didn't get involved. And I'm going to tell you, this is 14 years of teaching social psychology, and this is one of the primary topics. The bystander effect is clearly about our social environment. And this is 14 years of conversations with my students is why I think I have some of this perspective, because we talk a lot about the bystander effect being about diffusion of responsibility. Let me explain that to you a little bit, if you don't mind, I love it. Also, you're lucky enough to have a best friend who's just like a normal person, and I make all of the mistakes normal people make in my human behavior. And then I'm lucky enough to have you to be like, wait, wait, wait, let's talk about this. What's what's really funny is my colleagues are so brilliant. I'm like the dumb dumb at work, you know? Um, anyway, so Dali and Latini are two researchers who've been really very involved with the bystander effect. They've done a ton of different scenarios, things like standing in an elevator and dropping a bunch of pencils and they'll they'll just measure how many people help pick them up. Right. Okay. So that's like a little classic paradigm. And or how much do people act? There's a really interesting I'll link a little video for you. It has no sound. It's just an actual, um, footage of a study that they did where they put people in a smoke filled room, and they look at the rates and how long it takes by which someone will report it. So they basically have people come into a room, the room they are sitting there filling out a questionnaire waiting to be called back, sort of like in a doctor's office. Right? It's for a research project. And then they would pipe smoke as smoke smell and like a dry ice coming through a door. Okay. To the side when people are alone. And you can see this in the video, the the reaction to go get someone and identify help is immediate. When people are in a larger group where you see people in a huge group, so they'll put them in a room with what we call confederates. Let's be real clear here, Confederates and research is a very different term, okay? Confederates mean you're on the side of the researcher, but pretending to be a participant. Okay, so there you go. So, um, they'll have confederates, like in this study. It looks like. Oh, I don't know. There's ten Confederates. So there's ten people in the room pretending that they're filling out these questionnaires and being participants, but they're really deceiving the part, the one true participant. And they will fill the room with smoke the same way, and everyone ignores it. Okay. And they time this. And you can see in the video the real true participant is very concerned. And she's looking around and she's watching it and she's looking at the other people and she's looking at it, and she waits 20 minutes and never gets up and tells anyone. So the bystander effect has an one element of diffusion of responsibility. Just to take this back further. Kitty Genovese, what was the kind of first story of the bystander effect? It was in New York City. Kitty Genovese came home at like three in the morning from her job working as a barkeep, and a man named Winston Moseley basically attacked her with a knife and stabbed her. And it was a cold night. Most people had their windows closed. This was an area where there were some bars, but she was injured. One person called the police and said, like someone has been beat up but is okay. A lot of other people reported they thought it was maybe a bar fight, but there were very few calls early 2 to 911 and they later identified. Okay, so the really tragic story here is that Winston Moseley, left, put on a disguise. Kitty Genovese tried to make her way into her building in the back. She was injured. She'd been stabbed. She a locked door kept her from getting into her actual building. So she was, like, in a hallway. And he returned ten minutes later with the disguise. And he killed her and assaulted her. Well, he didn't kill her. He stabbed her more. He is. He raped her. He stole like her $50 and left. And a woman, a woman left her apartment. Hearing her screams, went and held her as she lay dying. Super brave, not knowing if the man was coming back. So, thinking about the power of women's intervention, she was with her. And then she died on the way to the hospital. When the ambulance came, there's really only reports of, like one person who knew this. But the next day, the newspaper ran a headline basically about that. You know, hundreds of people had witnessed this attack and nobody called 911. So it brought attention to the topic. Um, and people misunderstood it. There were people who knew and people who did call and say, you have to get out here after the second attack. So she did ultimately get her help. But it's it's a tragic, sad story. It's a horrible, horrible story. But that is what spurred a lot of conversation around the bystander effect. So the concept is diffusion of responsibility. Have you ever seen a fire by the side of the road, seen an accident, and you think somebody already called them one? We all have. That's diffusion of responsibility because everybody's thinking that everybody's thinking, um, in in that diffusion of responsibility, what can we do to combat that is to be the first choice. Okay. There's something else that comes into play here and tell me if I'm going too fast with this. But there is a concept called pluralistic ignorance. So the plural meaning in a group, an ignorance, meaning we're stupid to something, right? So pluralistic ignorance is basically the concept that we believe the rest of the group thinks, whatever the whole group is thinking, and it's different from what we think. Okay, so in this boy or not, Boise, in this Idaho town hall nobody's speaking up in to help this woman. For the most part, very few people are saying anything. So the thing you might think is. Everybody else is on the other side. That may not be true, right? Here's the example I give to my students. In the classroom. Someone goes through a lecture on statistics. They're like, there you go. Understand? Any questions? And nobody raises their hand. Well, you don't understand, but everybody else seems to. So you're like, it's it's all good. That's pluralistic ignorance. Because here's the thing is, if you actually do raise your hand and you say, I'm sorry you lost me at this part, can you go back? Five other people will also be like, same, right? So you can change the social norm and the situation. You can change the outcome by being that voice or that first person. The thing is, you have to put a lot of faith in that. There are other people that will figure it out. Some of the research on this pluralistic ignorance concept has been around like binge drinking on college campuses. So, um, people will say, I am less comfortable with the way that there is drinking culture on this campus than everybody else. But everybody's saying that. So when they talk about it, they're like, no, no, no, no, no. Everybody else feels similarly to you. You can actually modify your drinking behavior altogether as a group. You don't have to just go with the flow because the flow is not where everyone wants to be, right. So in these situations, being mindful of a diffusion of responsibility, if I don't help, maybe nobody else will. That's one. Two would be pluralistic ignorance. It seems like everyone is on the side of the oppressor here, but maybe they aren't. There are probably other people in this crowd who feel the same way I do. And if I speak up or stand up or do something, maybe they they will also speak up or stand up or do something. There's another great video on the bystander effect that is Philip Zimbardo, who's a now retired. Social scientists. Social psychologists are out of Stanford University, and he's really iconic. He did the Stanford Prison Experiment, which most people have seen, kind of a documentary on, um, he he narrates some little videos so we can link you one of those as well. But one of the videos is demonstrations of some of, like Dali and matinees type of research that they've done on on the bystander effect. And they, they demonstrate that you can change the social norm of the situation by taking action. So people will, for example, walk by someone who's injured on the street because everyone else is walking by. But then if one person stops to help, other people will come over also to help. So you can be that first impetus, you can be that first person to sort of change the whole situation by getting engaged, getting involved. I'll tell you one more study and then it helps me. It allows me to give you a little bit of information. So Dali and Latini did a study where they had people come in to do a research project where they were, um, on an intercom system doing a discussion and they were in like cubicles. And so basically the students would hear a student tell about difficulties concentrating on their studies, problems adjusting to life, whatever, like that. And then that same student would say, Sometimes I'm embarrassed, but sometimes I have severe seizures, and especially when I'm under stress, and then the conversation would switch to the next student. So essentially what they did is they had one participant, and then everything else was basically on a tape that they played. So it was over the intercom. You can't tell that it's not a real person, but they would they would have it be that it was just the participant and the person who had a seizure, and he would start to have a seizure right after saying that, saying, I have a seizure disorder. So the script starts with a lot of kind of stuttering, I need help. If someone could give me a little help here, uh, I might have a real problem right now. Help me out. It'd be good. I'm having a seizure coming on. I could really use help. I'm going to die. I'm going to die with stuttering throughout. Okay. As if going into a seizure. So everybody heard this. Who was in the. Who were participants, however? They were either the only person talking with the student on the intercom, or they were in a situation where there were two other students or one other student who was helping, or there were four other students who were also involved. So they were looking at this diffusion of responsibility. They found that in the one on one scenario, people helped write. They did help, and the delay was in responding was less than one minute. Okay. However, as the number of people involved in the situation got higher, we saw helping go down. So much so that when they were in a group of like six, only 60% of people helped at all, and it took an average of over three minutes for them to go out and get that help. So we can just see that we can be the person who acts quickly and decisively in those situations. There you go. There's your whole psychology lesson for today. I want to go back to school and taking our classes. That was like a super abbreviated, super fast way to run through some of the stuff that I talk about in class as related to the bystander effect, but what it really does is it fosters a community where we can I can share some of this research. I can share what it looks like and where it came from. And then we talk about why don't we help? And you know what? Some of the answers are that we probably haven't even we haven't discussed on here yet and most people probably haven't thought of, ah, it's none of my business. So a lot of the time people just want to mind their own business. Right? Or it's not my problem. Okay? So they don't want to go to jail because of something that they, you know, weren't involved with. Um, they're afraid for their own safety. I think that's a very common one, especially for women. But men to report that they are afraid for their safety, of course. Right. And also they figure somebody else should intervene. Why is this my responsibility to intervene? Do you do you know or think you probably know if also a piece of it is if you're going to be the first, am I wrong? Like, are people going to follow me or am I going to take this action, make this call or whatever? And I'm actually the one who's wrong and the group is right. I feel like the fear of that is really strong to. Oh for sure. There's a normative social influence there where you're looking around and you're like, this is okay, this is normal, right? Like this is a normal thing. She was being disruptive. Everyone thinks she should get out and she's not. And so they think these people should forcibly remove her. Is this like how things are done? Kind of. I mean, and that might sound ridiculous in this situation, but it's not right. And guess what? Guess what? People's response is that? Well, she shouldn't have been disruptive. She only got taken out because she was being disruptive. Well, and as you and I closed our conversation on this, I think one of the huge, huge takeaways we both had was that the fact that this was caught on tape is a cautionary tale, but it is also why we have to be brave and keep showing up. Right? Like those people who chose to come to the town hall, took the first step in being really brave and in showing up, especially as women. And that even when you see that this is what happens, they want us to be afraid. So now is when you do have to keep showing up in ways that I don't know. Yeah, because we have to keep showing up, like you said. And we have to stop infighting. We have you cannot be attacking the people who were there and suddenly faced with this horrifying situation. Those are that is not who we need to be going after. That is a waste of our energy. It is not productive. What's productive is what can we do? How do we prevent this? What do we do next time? Um, and how do we get the message to these people who did this that this is not okay? Well, and as I said to you, it their reaction, I had my gut reaction and my willingness to quickly just focus on the people who were there, who didn't help in the way I thought that I would have expected people to. That is what they capital T the bigger picture. The people who have caused this issue want us to focus on. They want me to be mad at the situation and not mad at. Why didn't these men feel it was okay to do this in the first place? Right? So that's what we need to be focusing on and looking at. Not just that initial reaction. Yeah, I mean, I just hope I hope there will be some thought behind using it as a productive conversation rather than shaming the folks who were there. Um, I think it's important we have the conversation about why this is happening, what is happening to women. And obviously it's not just women, but I think there's this head in the sand thing that is going on where people think this is just going to happen to other folks. This is just going to happen. Well, I'm not going to be in that situation, so that would never happen. Well, there's a different one. There's a different. And if you are anyone other than a white man right now, there are levels and degrees of danger. But I don't think that you are protected well by our government. Not not at all. But it's also why it's important that we keep in ways that we feel safe showing up, especially as women, and especially for each other. We've got to show up for each other. I'm glad you started with a with a story of women, you know, helping women and women empowerment. And I just think we should really focus on that. And I just think we're getting sidetracked. You know, it's the being pissed off at Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, like, get a life. Sorry. Focus on something realistic. Um, I don't know if you have heard of the the Netflix documentary that's out about Belle Gibson right now, who is the liar that she lied about having cancer? But in it, there are all these people, Emily, who have this feeling that she doesn't have cancer and they want to call her out on it. But exactly what we have been talking about. Nobody wants to be the first because they're like, what if I'm wrong? If she gets how brain cancer, I look like an asshole, but they're like, she is harming people with her misinformation and disinformation and it has to be stopped. But it went on for so long that. And then as soon as one person said something, other people were like, oh, I haven't experienced with her. Oh, I thought the same thing. But it took one person a really long time to finally be like, I'm going to say something. Yeah, these situations are that's really hard because you do want to be careful because the thing is, we don't want to actually intervene inappropriately. You don't want to call the cops on somebody and escalate a situation where it's completely unnecessary. You don't want to get involved in something when it's not your business and everything is fine and you've misread the situation, I get it. You. You know, we don't know how to behave. We only know how to act in social circumstances because of how everyone else is acting. That's it. It's it's social norms. Like we have cultural norms that are entirely different. In the United States, as in other countries, there are things that we engage in and do that people elsewhere would never think about doing. And same, you know, the opposite direction. So we look to others for behavioral guidance, and we have to sometimes think about, can I be the guidance right? Is it the right time to be the behavioral guidance orderly? Total sidebar a different topic, but you just made me think of it. And I think it's important about different societies, how we are things within our culture. We just had a family move here from Germany, and the boy joined Durham soccer team. And I had never thought of this or ever seen the community. We live in this way because I have grown up here and I've lived in it my entire life. She was saying, you know, in Germany on the weekends, everybody's together like we all are together all the time. And she's like, I didn't realize in America it's it's not like that. She's like, kids go to school together, they play sports together, but she goes on the weekends. People are so isolated doing their own thing. There's this lack of community, and I don't think that's true for you or for I. I think we have fostered that in our smaller communities with kids sleepovers. And but she was just saying I it was so stark when I moved here to see the difference between how people want to be together and foster that time and hear how people pull away and want to just be with, quote unquote, their people. So anyway, just I just thought that was interesting. Yeah. And also sad. She's like, Roman wants to know why he's not doing like three sleepovers a weekend. Like, that's just what we do here. Families raise families. That's amazing. I know, I'm like, oh, another check in that maybe we I should move past. No kidding, I do. That's my favorite thing about here is the week we call it Village parenting about in my town. It's absolutely the best when your kid is just bopping house to house and spending the night somewhere random. And we're just really getting into that phase. And I love it so much, and I just really want to foster that, I love it. I think that conversation for another day. But I was thinking about this on my run today because my kids do a lot of sleepovers and we have a lot of people here. And I was trying to think, what is what's that about for me? And it boils down to raising kids as hard. And the more people you have in your community who love them, I think the more people they have to go to when things get sticky and hard, because kids don't want to talk to their parents about everything. So I'm like, if I give you access to enough other people to help, I just think the more people that can love your kids, the better. Yeah, and friends and support system. I know people are really anti sleepovers and I definitely understand that. And I think I made a really privileged position where the people I'm surrounded with, I've known their families for like since they had little tiny kids. And so I feel more comfortable with my kids sleeping over there because I know their daughters and sons so well, they show no signs of anything unsavory. You know, they're in groups, I don't know. I know you can't prevent everything. I know that sounds very naive of me, but we're very selective still about where my kids can spend the night. But I've just we've formed such a nice community where I've known people for like, 11, 12 years and their families and feel confident with them. And we have kids that literally have toothbrushes here. I'm like, you're toothbrushes in the bathroom. Okay, okay. Thank you. Taking the time to teach us. I just felt like everybody needed to hear this. Okay. Bye, everybody. Hi. Thanks for listening. For more content, find us on Patreon at the Creepy Book Club. Happy reading!