Heard of the bystander effect? where people don't intervene because of psychological barriers to helping? Or freeze up during an emergency event?
Also heard about how virtual reality and Staged events are used in training context? e.g. military training, or treatment for phobias?
Well what if we can use virtual reality to train people to overcome the need to act as a bystander, or to freeze in the face of stress?
However as this is more of a general psychological conditioning, rather than training for specific 'events' like military combat, this program would instead test the users to act in many different unique situations, ranging from big large scale disasters to a suicidal person.
If enough people take this psychological conditioning, it may work as a mass social engineering effort to reduce crimes overall and improve all parts of our society in regards to response to emergencies.-- mofosyne, Dec 29 2011 Wikipedia: Bystander Effect http://en.wikipedia...ki/Bystander_effectWorth reading. There are lots of interesting detail variations on this one. [jutta, Dec 29 2011] There are a lot of things that should be taught in schools but aren't.-- DIYMatt, Dec 29 2011 Awareness of its existence may help and i would be surprised if that's not on school-level psychology syllabi.-- nineteenthly, Dec 29 2011 This might be a bigger topic than you realize - you want to encourage people to be willing to help, but you don't necessarily want to encourage them to help in dangerous situations. You might want to just focus on medical emergencies. Learning basic first-aid and what to do in a medical emergency is good for everyone.-- phundug, Dec 29 2011 People freezing during an emergency is not the same thing as the Bystander Effect (but both are legitimate). BION, 'freezing up' (can't remember the psychobabble term) may actually be a hereditary trait. As usual, this info comes from a magazine article I read sometime in the last decade, probably in a medical journal, so it may take me some time to find a link. Stay tuned.
I like the idea. [+]-- Alterother, Dec 29 2011 //don't necessarily want to encourage them to help in dangerous situations// Really? That's sad.
Obviously people should stay out if they have absolutely no concept of the dangers and how to avoid them, but in situations where someone can make a reasonable assesment of the danger, it would be really great if people would think, "Hey without my help that guy's going to die for sure. If I try to help there's a 20% chance I will die too, but an 80% chance that we will both live," then go for it. The world needs more heros.-- scad mientist, Dec 30 2011 Lack of confidence or competence in that kind of situation is not just to do with bystander effect. First aid has been dumbed-down for a long time now because paramedics are more extensively trained and due to the possibility of litigation, but also, people tend to have preconceptions based on inaccurate understandings of dangers or approaches. This is a cultural problem. It does need, rather urgently, to be addressed.-- nineteenthly, Dec 30 2011 Simpleton:- if what you said is true, that cultural indoctrination and ensuring there is not too many "empowered individual" from existing; is important for stability of society... then I'll agree on the condition that this program is none voluntary and is lottery based to take 20% of the student population.
The reason is that in order to have proper penetration in the population, you can't just allow people to 'choose to join' the cultural deprogramming course.
This way you will ensure proper distribution of this skill. e.g. from politicians to the lowly labor workers
Ideally this approach will ensure that out of 10 people present in a significant event, there will be at least 2 deprogrammed individual to temporary snap the other 8 out of stupor.-- mofosyne, Dec 31 2011 From my perspective, doing this amounts to something which might be included in parenting, and in fact the offspring are aware of bystander apathy and various other social psychological phenomena such as the influence of conformity in connection with their upbringing.-- nineteenthly, Dec 31 2011 If this was widespread then, in the event of something happening which requires swift intervention, I would think "Everyone else has probably had the anti-bystander effect training - I'm sure *they'll* do something".-- hippo, Jan 04 2012 Perhaps everyone can recieve an anti-bystander training, but there will be several different trainings for specific situations, handed out randomly among the various people.-- ye_river_xiv, Jan 05 2012 One of the best ideas I've ever seen on hb-- white, Jan 06 2012 random, halfbakery