- remove social cohesion
- think about what change I want to see
As I was interviewing a young mother taking her children for a walk in Regent’s Park last Friday, I was reminded of an incident I had previously encountered in Regent’s Park. It was about mid-afternoon and a young boy, probably about 8 years old, fell off his scooter, and because of the speed of the scooter, he fell face-first onto the ground and bumped his nose, which gave him a nosebleed on the spot. As I was close to him, I couldn’t do nothing when I saw that he was hurt, so I helped him up and gave him a tissue to wipe his nosebleed. But the little boy reacted with rejection and even pushed away the tissue I offered him. I found it hard to believe that I was trying to help him, so why didn’t he accept my offer? When I interviewed the mother at the time, she said that she would see things happening in the park that might need help, but she didn’t know whether it was better to help or not, so it bothered her too. During tutorial, my teacher came up with a theory called the bystander effect. The bystander effect, also known as the diffusion of responsibility effect, means that for a given task, if a single individual is asked to complete the task alone, the sense of responsibility will be high and a positive response will be made. However, if a group is asked to work together on a task, each individual in the group will have a weak sense of responsibility and will tend to withdraw in the face of difficulties or when faced with responsibility. This is because the former takes responsibility independently, while the latter expects others to take on more responsibility. The essence of “diffusion of responsibility” is that there are too many people without responsibility and responsibility is not implemented. Social psychologists Latani and Daly (1970) found that the presence of other bystanders significantly reduces the likelihood of people intervening in an emergency. Since 1980, more than 60 experimental studies have compared the performance of pro-social behaviour when alone or with others and found that approximately 90% of these experiments demonstrated that people were more likely to offer help when alone. Studies have also found that the more people present, the less likely the victim is to be helped. Latani and Rodin (1969) conducted an experimental study. Subjects participating in the experiment were made to hear the sound of what they thought was a lady in the next office falling heavily from her chair and moaning loudly, “Oh my God! My foot …… I …… I …… can’t move …… it. Oops, my bare bones. I …… can’t hold …… this …… thing.” The full course of events lasted about two minutes. Observe the subjects’ reactions in the different contexts. The first situation, where the subject was present alone, resulted in 70% of the subjects going to help the victim; the second situation, where two strangers were present when it happened, resulted in 40% of the subjects going to help the victim; the third situation, where the subject was present with a negative experimenter’s assistant who told the subject that there was no need to help, resulted in only 7% of the subjects going to help the victim.
Those who did nothing in the process clearly did not consider the incident to be an emergency. “It was just a minor sprain,” said one. “I didn’t want to make her feel embarrassed”, explained others. This proves the bystander effect, where people become less likely to help when it is understood that the number of people noticing the emergency increases, so it may be unsafe for the victim to be in a crowd.
After doing this experiment, both Latani and Daly asked the subjects if the presence of others would affect them. Although we have seen the wonderful influence of being present, the subjects always denied such an influence. They simply replied, “I know there are others, but I do the same thing as I would if they were not there.” These answers reinforce the familiar idea that we usually don’t actually know the reasons for what we do.
And there is another point to consider, as many parents have taught their children about stranger abduction, so they may be very wary of strangers.
With regard to my project, I felt the word social cohesion needed to be removed because I didn’t actually want people to coalesce into a collective, or I didn’t want strangers to interact more in the park, because these didn’t seem so meaningful. I started my project by wanting to do lying on the grass, because it was only when I came to the UK that I discovered that people could lie so comfortably and casually in the grass in the park, enjoying the sunshine and nature. Of course, I also found that there were some uncomfortable points in the park, such as people littering and spitting. Of course, this is what I find uncomfortable from my perspective as a young Chinese woman, so I think the park can be made better and more enjoyable for people, which is why this project was created.
Why do people throw away litter?
Human behaviour is a result of the interaction between people and their environment. In terms of moral risk, people who engage in bad social behaviour such as littering and are blamed by the outside world will be internally disturbed; this blaming only has a warning effect, but there is no threat of benefit to the person concerned, and as time extends and the phenomenon of littering is ignored, the moral guilt will fade; in terms of impression management, the external environment is relatively remote and in a lively situation, the external restraint is weakened, and other people have no time to pay attention and In terms of anonymity theory, when one is playing, one’s identity is concealed and one will behave in a way that one would never behave when one is alone, when public responsibility overshadows individual responsibility; in terms of de-individuation, when one is gathered in a group, one is prone to self-absorption, the broken window effect, the herd mentality arises, and behaviour follows the crowd; in addition, when one is at a special time, one tries to find release because of the usual stress. In addition, when people are under special circumstances, they try to find a way to release their stress, which leads to some indulgent behaviour, such as littering, which can occur unintentionally. For example, the invention of the washing machine was because washing by hand was too much of a waste of time and water, so man invented the washing machine. The same goes for other inventions. This kind of littering is indeed an act of low quality, and I hope that we can all correct it.
The American psychologist Jen Badou once conducted an experiment: he parked two identical cars in two neighbourhoods, one in the middle-class neighbourhood of Palo Alto and the other in the relatively cluttered Bronx. For the one parked in the Bronx, he removed the license plate and left the top up, only to have it stolen within a day, while the one parked in Palo Alto remained untouched for a week. The one parked in Palo Alto remained untouched for a week, while the one parked in Palo Alto remained untouched for a week. Later, Gianbaldo knocked a hole in the car’s glass with a hammer and it disappeared after only a few hours.
“broken window law”.
Based on this experiment, the political scientist Wilson and the criminologist Kelling came up with the “broken window law”. They argued that if someone broke a piece of glass in a building and the window was not repaired, others might be tempted by some implicit connivance to break more windows. Over time, these windows create a sense of disorder. As a result, in this atmosphere of public insensitivity, crime can flourish and spread.
The “broken window theory” reveals that the environment is highly suggestive and seductive. The presence of any undesirable phenomenon sends an undesirable message and gradually leads to the unlimited expansion of that undesirable phenomenon. This is often the case in life.
In some metropolitan areas throughout the country, especially in Beijing, traffic violations used to be a common phenomenon and many traffic accidents occurred as a result. So, why do people do it again and again when they know it is against the rules? This phenomenon is the fulfilment of the psychological “law of broken windows”. For example, in a place with clear windows and an elegant environment, no one will make a lot of noise or spit; on the contrary, if the environment is dirty, you will often see uncivilised behaviour such as spitting, fighting unreasonably or cursing at each other, or even defecating anywhere.
For example, at a bus stop, if everyone is lining up in an orderly manner, no one will jump the queue without regard to the eyes of others; on the contrary, if a few people are pushing and pushing before the vehicle stops, I am afraid that those who come later will not have the patience to queue up if they want to get on the bus.
This law tells us that if any incidental, isolated or minor damage to the management of order is left unattended, unresponsive or poorly corrected, the consequence may be to encourage more people to do so. In no time at all, all kinds of disruptive behaviour that undermine public order will spring up.
The best way to prevent this is to fix the “first broken window” in time.
For example, if everyone behaves, talks and behaves in a civilised manner in public, it will create a civilised and educated atmosphere. “Start with me. Start with your surroundings” may seem like a small thing, but it is actually very important. “It is not possible to encourage or take a seemingly small transgression lightly, because “a single spark can start a prairie fire”, and it can have far-reaching effects and spread.
This law also teaches us that the more disorderly and disorganised something is, the more vulnerable it is to abuse. For when the first window is broken and order is disrupted, subsequent violations will follow. A group that is in disorder is vulnerable to encroachment or even annexation by outside forces.
For example, the dispute over the production rights of a magazine has been going on for several years, with people’s hearts in disarray and complex contradictions, so not only do people want to embezzle this “pie in the sky”, but advertisers and publishers also take the opportunity to refuse to pay for advertising and distribution. In stark contrast, another magazine, where the management is tight and the system is standardised, not only can outsiders not interfere, but advertisers and publishers can never advertise or get distribution rights if the fees are not in place, so the company will be solid and long-lasting!