Got off the bus last night, walked across the road to wait for my next bus, and, since it was around -4 degrees outside last night and the snow was blowing around, I joined a couple of young, potentially dickish-looking guys sitting inside the bus stop. They were two ~19-yr-olds, and by the looks of them and their body language, I couldn't tell if they'd be friendly, or in that tring-too-hard-too-hard-to-be-Alpha, young-guy phase.
A couple of minutes later, across the street, a car tried to pull into the gas station - but it couldn't make it in with the ice and the slight slope up from the street. A Good Samaritan would run across the street and offer to help give the car a push - especially after the female passenger got out and tried pushing the car unsuccessfully. Part of me considered going over and helping, and part of me, conditioned to not get involved with the affairs of strangers, wasn't fully convinced yet - but before I had made up my mind - these two young guys jumped up, ran across the road - and only then did I feel like a total douche for not responding positively as quickly as them.
On our walk through Fairfield on Wednesday, Jared and I stopped to help this driver whose car wheels were stuck skidding in the snow at the curb. He managed to get it started again, but the wheels kept grinding and the car kept sliding out of his control. The driver eventually decided to give up and walk home for a shovel. I guess we responded relatively quickly, but maybe that's because there was no one else around to do the same and the risk was fairly minimal (we also passed others in the same predicament later, at a distance, and refrained from getting involved). We both remembered times we didn't respond as fast as we might have to people in some form of minor distress. I think most people experience this sense of hesitation or paralysis to some degree and I don't know if it is due to social conditioning (like you suggest) or results from something deeper and more instinctual, (i.e. self-preservation, avoidance of danger).
ReplyDeleteA little of tis and a little of tat. definitely we've adopted some behavior evolutionarily. Cavemen who delved into business that wasn't rightly theirs were less likely to survive and procreate, hence inherited behavior. Also, though, studies have shown that we are influenced socially in this way too: If we see someone passed out on the street corner, we're less likely to respond if they're dressed shabbily, or if we see several other people pass them by first. Funnily, if we see people help the same person as we walk by, we're far more likely to join in to help if we perceive the behavior to be acceptable/normative.
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