Why do people choose not to help when they actually can without running any risks? Frustrated with some colleagues over a decision important to me but not to them, I must have been thinking aloud. “By-stander effect” says my teenager, interested in psychology lately, shrugging. “Huh?” I say, and she explains. Damn, she explains it really well!
When did she get so clever, knowledgeable, I mean, simply brilliant? Over the past year or so, certainly, she has taught me much more than I have taught her, and given me more in the way of crucial knowledge about life than any other single person or source of information has. Listening to her explanation of the concept of by-stander effect made me feel instantly good and less frustrated about my colleagues. Everybody needs a brilliant teenager to keep perspective and derive wisdom. Sure, part of the wisdom is the acquired ability to derive it while engaging in mundane activities such as picking up socks from the floor. It’s a package: Socks with wisdom, or nothing at all.
So the bystander effect explains many things and is, in my teenager’s opinion, the reason why important decisions must never be made in meetings where people are less likely to opt for action and more likely to opt for the status quo. Good point, actually. A quick google search has confirmed that some serious research has been done on this issue, but nothing I have found summarizes the situation as well as my brill teen. Very often I find myself wanting to do something more proactive in a meeting and then letting the idea slip by while listening to the older and wiser (compared to me, certainly not to my teenager) colleagues who are not only more eager to speak but also happier to keep things as they are. In the end, too often, very little or nothing at all changes. This may be good or bad.
But seriously, when, and how on earth, did she get so brilliant? I am pretty sure that I have next to no role in this, because I have been an overworked mum for much of the thirteen years I have been responsible for her upbringing, and my genes are hopeless when it comes to applying such wisdom to real-life situations. Maybe I should ask her why they gave me those unusually big and friendly smiles after making that decision? Very bizarre, the human psyche. Good thing that I now have unlimited access to psychological wisdom in the house.
The Pensive Owl 