Individuals in Groups

In the article,"Individuals in Groups" Carol Travis explains that people tend to behave and act different when they're on their own. Experiments have shown that people who were alone acted quicker when presented with a dangerous situation, than people who were in a group. Psychologists call it "diffusion of responsibility" or "social loafing". She ends by saying that when individuals are in a group, they react less to danger or an accident because they think that someone else is going to take care of it. From what I've seen people act different when they're in a group because they want to follow what everyone else is doing and when someone is alone they are in charge of what to do.

 When I was in eight grade a group of my friends decided it was a good idea to throw a stink bomb in the middle of math class and that was just awful everyone had to get out of the class room. Before we left the room one of them threw the plastic back out of the window so that the teacher wouldn't find it. Needless to say our teacher got mad and was asking everyone who was responsible because he was going to get detention. A couple of my friends and I knew who did it , but nobody told the teacher because we didn't want him to get in trouble. This show that when people are in groups they do things that they would probably won't dare to do if they were alone and if it's a group of  friends you try to support them even if the idea is stupid. This is an example when the author said "group observing the same danger, they hold back. The reason has more to do with the nature of groups than the nature of individuals". In this case it was us not telling the teacher who was responsible and preventing our friend from getting in trouble.

 I was getting off the bus the other day and a big gust of wind came by and push an old lady down to the floor. I was the only person around so I immediately went to help her and see if she was okay, she was fine and  I helped her get up. I think that if I had found my self in the same situation with more people around there I wouldn't have probably reacted as quickly as I did. As the author said "The more people in a group, the lazier each individual in it becomes". This would have been an example of "social loafing" because if there were more people there I would of imminently assume someone was going to help her and think there wouldn't be any reason to get five people to help a person. If there's someone that need help and I'm alone I would feel more responsible to what going to happen to that person and be more willingly to help anyone, than if I was in group.

In conclusion, individuals in group tend to support each other especially if they're in a group of friends and dare to do more things than if they were alone.