Talk:Diffusion of responsibility

message: *The phrase "certain critical size" needs to be made more specific, either with a number or a range for group size.
*References are needed. I am assuming that this phenomenon is actually named in the literature, and not an abstraction of other concepts. BenC7 11:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To the best of my knowledge, researchers have not yet determined what that "certain critical size" is though there is some thought suggesting that Dunbar's number is probably related.  Rossami (talk) 14:56, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notes for article improvement 

message: Kitty Genovese is the classic example of people ducking responsibility, but the story is not really so simple.  It's a classic example of tabloid sensationalism, though in this case the tabloid being the New York Times.  Certainly there are people who did nothing because they didn't want to get involved, but the Times story made it seem like people who had heard less than a minute of disturbance ignored her screams for an extended period.  We don't know how many calls to the police there were (there was no record keeping), but there were calls that the NYPD did not answer.    The Times reporter was getting his info from the police, and left out mention of any calls to the police before the one the police responded to.  —   Randall Bart     Talk   09:59, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kitty Genovese 

message: On 6 June 2008, anonymous user:208.179.21.221 removed the second bullet in the opening paragraph with the comment that "The second bullet point refers to an agentic state, not to diffusion of responsibility..."  The second bullet read that "diffusion of responsibility can manifest itself: ...
*in hierarchical organizations as when, for example, underlings claim that they were following orders and supervisors claim that they were just issuing directives and not doing anything per se."
Most ethical codes around the world reject the position that merely being an agent absolves the subordinate of all personal responsibility for the actions taken.  Likewise, most ethical codes hold the superior to some level of responsibility for the actions taken in his/her name.  Those making the argument that "I was just following orders" or that "I didn't pull the trigger myself" are attempting to diffuse their personal responsibility onto an amorphous "other" and are failing to act in the same ways that the bystander fails to act in the hope or assumption that some other will.  I've restored the bullet pending further discussion here.  Rossami (talk) 04:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Agentic state 

message: this article is cited as #4, but is not linked to a url. adding the link to the references page is not intuitive, so I'm putting it here - one of you wikicabal power-editors can put it where it needs to go: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-in-world/201006/the-diffusion-responsibility 104.183.254.28 (talk) 01:19, 30 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  wiki noob here. idk how to include this in references section 

message: The current scope of the "somebody else's problem" article is a single Douglas Adams joke about people passing responsibility for problems onto others. It looks like that article used to be about "a psychological effect where people choose to dissociate themselves from an issue that may be in critical need of recognition" combining various factors like diffusion of responsibility, the bystander effect and information overload to describe how a human might arrive at the conclusion that something is "somebody else's problem". But this was deleted as original research in 2017, I think correctly. 
If all that's left is a short Douglas Adams joke, it could be merged here. Lord Belbury (talk) 08:38, 24 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Apologies if I get this wrong somehow, not being a contributor I can only bring my perspective as a user, but I do not favour the idea of a merge with the SEP page. I visited that page specifically (with the intention of linking to it) and would have been confused/bemused to find this page instead. That page deals with a joke, one with quite widespread cult(ural) appeal, and it should be left at that; its overlap with scientifically founded concepts of psychology is not surprising, but also not the point. Similarly I wouldn't suggest merging the Dead Parrot Sketch page with one on the mortuary practices of psittaculturalists (although that page is missing at present). Please leave it alone! 91.135.10.3 (talk) 14:03, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: By merging the two, this article should and would be updated to also mention the joke. I wouldn't suggest merging the Parrot Sketch anywhere as it's clearly had a significant cultural impact in it's own right, and the article says as much. I can't see that the same could be said for Adams's SEP field, good though the joke is. --Lord Belbury (talk) 19:57, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

text: I regularly link this page as a reference to the Douglas Adams joke. I don't think the article should be removed. To me, this article has always been about the Douglas Adams joke and not any sort of psychoanalytic theory. The joke isn't the Diffusion of Responsibility field it's the "Somebody Else's Problem" field. It's a popular phrase that someone may search for specifically. Kevinh456 (talk) 21:45, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

text: (Note: since proposing this merge, an editor has restored the old introduction framing the SEP article as "a psychological effect where people choose to dissociate themselves from an issue that may be in critical need of recognition" rather than being an article primarily about the Douglas Adams joke.) --Lord Belbury (talk) 22:00, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

text: I see the SEP as far more culturally significant that the esoteric "diffusion of responsibility" and use in several of my published articles. Please leave it alone - I don't see it as a joke but an important way of discussing something that is actually everyone's problem. Alan Charman.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.60.54.101 (talk) 20:57, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

text: Addition to previous post - a perfect example of cultural use available today, from no lesser source than PBS, in an article on mosquito-borne diseases. In the 8th paragraph, the phrase "somebody else's problem" is used to name the effect. Yes, "body" not "one", but the two are quite interchangeable and it shows that the usage has evolved to the point of being its own separate name for the effect. Alan Charman.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.60.54.101 (talk) 17:06, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there some belief here that Adams invented the phrase "somebody else's problem", and that it fell into common usage as a result? I assumed it was an older phrase and sources seem to back this up, so I've updated the somebody else's problem article to say as much. --Lord Belbury (talk) 20:19, 30 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed merge with [[Somebody else's problem]] 

message: "In prosocial situations, individuals' willingness to intervene or assist someone in need is inhibited by the presence of other people. The individual is under the belief that other people present will or should intervene. Thus, the individual does not perceive it as her or his responsibility to take action."
"Prosocial behavior, or intent to benefit others, is a social behavior that 'benefit[s] other people or society as a whole', 'such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering'."
These two statements seem to be in pretty straightforward contradiction to each other (and the first includes the second as hover text). If there's something subtle going on that makes the outcome of an individual not helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, or volunteering prosocial, that needs to be called out much more explicitly. 2600:4040:2654:5E00:4C:441:D7B:F3DA (talk) 16:11, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  prosocial diffusion