American Scientist

Have you ever been a hero? Going about our daily routines, few of us have the opportunity to save a life or disrupt a crime in progress—fewer still take that opportunity when it presents itself. I once witnessed a car accident in which the guilty party leapt from his disabled vehicle and fled the scene. I quickly pulled over and dialed 911. Fortunately, another passerby stopped and apprehended the suspect. The culprit—who was clearly intoxicated—struggled to escape, but he was easily overpowered. After emergency personnel arrived, I drove away contemplating the other witness’s bravery and how I could have done more.

Not only are acts of heroism unsurprisingly rare, reports about observers who, out of indifference or perplexity, fail to report criminal behavior or respond to emergencies with inaction are common. Although it may be tempting to blame the desensitizing effects of our media- and technology-saturated age, the failure of witnesses to take action isn’t a new phenomenon.

Psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley identified a pattern of behavior they called the bystander effect, which they demonstrated in their labs for the first time in 1968. They describe it as a behavior that occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation. Latané and Darley were spurred to their studies by the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City, a case that became infamous because of observers’ inaction.

Today the bystander effect is being revisited in the context of human-imposed environmental threats, including climate change. There’s plenty of evidence that the conditions we’re observing—from multi-year water shortages to massive, deforestation-related mudslides to plummeting biological diversity—are dire. Yet the severity of these threats isn’t being met with proportionally urgent action.

A number of options exist to help us overcome what in this case appears to be bystander effect on a massive scale. For example, by openly making sustainable decisions, we can demonstrate helping behavior, which can inspire others to follow suit. We can also make a difference by educating people on sustainable living and by helping people form a close relationship with nature. As key sources of useful information related to environmental management, scientists and engineers can play a special role as educators and problem solvers.

In this issue, you’ll find articles that collectively serve as a blueprint for researchers to use in leading this effort. In "The Tales We All Must Tell," Robert Chianese encourages all of us to own up to our environmental transgressions and atone for them by sharing personal confessions; in "Coexisting with Wildfire," Max Moritz and Scott Knowles offer immediate solutions by acknowledging the inevitable escalation of wildfire incidences brought on by global warming and by explaining how we can plan and build communities that minimize our losses; and in "G. Evelyn Hutchinson’s Exultation in Natural History," Laura Martin recounts the career of this famed ecologist and storied American Scientist columnist and suggests that his passion for the natural world is an example all scientists can follow to serve humankind today.

It’s clear we can no longer afford to be indifferent to these concerns. Scientists and engineers are in the unique position of both possessing the most actionable information and having the tools and capacity to act. Research has shown that observing prosocial behavior can motivate others to do the same. In other words, heroism is potentially contagious.

After later discovering that the hero from that other car was an off-duty police officer, I realized that even an act performed by a professional could instill a greater sense of humanity in me. For the sake of preserving our planet, the scientific community can be the example we all need.