Hi Max,
As you're probably aware, the diffusion of responsibility idea came from
the work of Darley & Latane in 1968, they were trying to understand the
events surrounding the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 during which 38
people were aware of the situation over a 40 minute time period yet no one
did anything. This has since become a well established principle in Social
Psychology under the general idea of helping behavior.
To answer your specific question- social psychology as we (or at least I)
know it seems to be primarily an American and Western European construct.
I am not aware of work that has been done in Asia, but would be very
interested to hear about it. The Soviets (now Russians) developed the
historical-cultural approach spearheaded by Vygotsky, Rubinshtein,
Leontjev and Lurija. This takes a somewhat different approach and seems to
blend the aims of both cognitive, developmental, and social psychology. As
a matter of fact, I feel it holds great promise for informing
organizational work.
Your conjecture that the difference in cultures would lead to a difference
in behavior, especially in Asian countries certainly makes sense.
Hopefully someone will chime in with some more information.
Max Schupbach wrote:
> that is a great question, in my opinion. For my own studies I would like
> to know what your viewpoint is or what research has been done about how
> this is true for other cultures. Do other cultures where community plays a
> bigger a role than in the west and where concepts of duties towards the
> group are more important, like in some Asian cultures, etc. show similar
> patterns around your "call 911" example?
>
> greetings
> Max
--Ed Rosch <earosch@home.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>