Lauren Slater- “In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing”

Slater describes the progression of the steps that must be taken for individuals to aid in the event
of an emergency.
1) You must notice an event is occurring.
2) You interpret the event as one in which help is needed.
3) You must assume personal responsibility.
4) You must decide what action to take.
5) You must then take action.
The event slater describes is the murder and rape of Kitty Genovese in New York, 1964. Over
the half hour span of the crime, the murderer repeatedly left and returned three times and
continued to stab Kitty as 38 witnesses looked on in silence.
Several tests were conducted to figure out why these witnesses did not act. The first test
conducted involved students at NYU. Students were taken into a room by themselves and were
told that they were going to be listening to other students’ stories and struggles who were all in
rooms next door via a speaker. One of the students over the speaker staged an epileptic attack
over the speakers. Only students who thought they were in a small group with the epileptic
student went out of the room to go help while those who believed there were a lot of other
students in the group did not help. This has to do with a diffusion of responsibility.
Darley and Latane discovered that we're less likely to help others if in the presence of other
observers.
Emergencies are not facts but conscious construction. Therefore we have a tendency construct
emergencies mostly when we feel endangered.
We make decisions based on social cues and not evidence.
We value social etiquette over survival.
An experiment performed showed that people in a room with others generally ignored the fact
that smoke was coming out of the vents because others in the room seemed unbothered by it.
However subjects would create an emergency situation of the smoke coming out the vents
whenever they were alone in the room.
When the subjects were alone in the room they constructed an emergency situation which
supports the claim that emergencies are not facts but conscious construction