"Hey You, in the Green Shirt!" How to Get Help When you Need it

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If you were to have your bag stolen while you were picnicking at the park, would you rather be in an area that was full of families having picnics, or somewhere more desolate where there were only one or two other people around? The intuitive answer is an area full of families – someone is more likely to have seen something, right? Counter-intuitively, psychological research suggests you would be better off in a desolate area with only one or two other people around. Researchers have found time and time again that as the number of people in a crowd increases, people are less likely to help because they experience diffusion of responsibility, creating what social psychologists call the "bystander effect." That is, people's sense of responsibility to help decreases as the size of the crowd increases, so the more people there are around, the less likely it is that any one person will lend a helping hand. No one helps because they assume someone else will. People also tend to look to others for information, so if we look around and see that no one is helping, we assume that means that no help is needed. So how do we get help when we need it?
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