Response Ability

About

Response Ability, a "reality"-style educational video package sponsored by Tau Kappa Epsilon, brings viewers to understand how groupdynamics can prevent people from taking action to stop dangerous or unhealthy behaviors. And, it demonstrates skills to successfully intervene when they witness hazing or other dangerous or unhealthy behavior.

The program uses actual undergraduates with real examples to help members relate to bystander intervention. This program is designed to empower and train students on ways to transform values into action by intervening when others exhibit these behaviors. Each chapter should have the ResponseAbility program within their library.

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Bystander Behavior and the Bystander Effect

The primary issue we address is bystander behavior.  This is the human phenomenon where we see or hear a problematic situation yet we do not take the actions necessary to intervene. The bystander effect, or Genovese syndrome, is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer any means of help in an emergency situation to the victim when other people are present. The probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely related to the number of bystanders; in other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. The mere presence of other bystanders greatly decreases intervention. This happens as the number of bystanders increases, any given bystander is less likely to interpret the incident as a problem, and less likely to assume responsibility for taking action.