Individuals in groups

                                                                 Individuals in groups

   
    According to Carol Tavris with "in groups We shrink" most people tend  feel more compassion when they observe a disaster on their own. She gives us some examples of experiments that she found  to proof her opinion about how careless we are when we are in groups. She argues that if there are a lot of people witness the calamity, most people won't try to help. The psychologists call this "diffusion of responsibility" because we always try to wait until somebody else takes care of the problem. We try to avoid the responsibility of helping a stranger because we think that we are not supposed to risk our lives for someone who is not even our friend.


     We are not a bad people for not helping others in any risk we witness because we can not be a hero all the time. Sometimes we have to see if it is right to intervene in the problem, because we could be a dead heroes if we are not careful.. Sometimes when we don't act we help more than doing it.  I remember when i thief tried to steal me and people who where around didn't do anything, at the beginning I thought they were  bad people but now I realize  that I just could not wait that they risk their life for me, because they didn't even know me and if they would do something about it, maybe the thief would be scared and would have killed all of us. That people could feel the need to do something, but the scenario was  impossible to let them act.

     People feel compassion for other people because we all are humans, and we are sensitive if we see something unfair or even a natural disaster. We all remember what happened in Chile, the earthquake that killed many people in that country was horrible. If we see this kind of disaster, we feel bad, but don't do anything about it, because we think we can't. But, if someone says that we should be a united group and help each other, even with a small monetary donation. we start helping the affected population, because in this case we think, we are a big group of super heroes.  If we change the situation, and it is not about a natural disaster, but a supermarket robbery. If there is only one person witnessing the disaster, this person will call the police immediately, because this person know that nobody else can do anything about it. But if there were more people witnessing the robbery. Nine of ten people in this group think that maybe somebody else already called the police, and they don't move one finger to stop the robbery, they try to avoid the responsibility.

    The best way to discover how humans we are is seeing a person we love in risk, because we will do anything to help that person. I remember when i was in high school, I had an attack of asthma in the classroom, and I thought I was going to die, but everybody in the classroom worked as a team, and helped me out. They didn't see each other, to see who was going to do something first, they just act as the humans they are. Nobody was selfish and they call the emergency line to provide me the respective medical assistance. I think it depends on the risk of the situation and the person  they see in danger. As far as I am concerned, they helped me because they knew me, maybe if I were a completely stranger I wouldn't run with the same fate.

  It depends on each person to be a super hero or be one more of a specific group of people who  people who witness an anomaly. Most of the time we notice that we are humans, when we are the victim because, we don't have to give help, we hope somebody to give it to us.  When somebody else is in the risk, and it is a completely stranger to us, we forget that we are humans, and we wait until someone else help him or her.