Not Famous's video: How Among Us proves the Bystander effect theory

Thanks to Innersloth for developing this great game and to BogdiRo for gameplay footage! The bystander effect,is a social psychological theory that states that individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when there are other people present. First proposed in 1968, much research, has focused on increasingly varied factors, such as the number of bystander, group cohesiveness, and diffusion of responsibility that reinforces mutual denial. The theory was prompted by the case of Kitty Genovese about which it was reported that 38 bystanders watched passively. Recent events captured on security cameras, and the coherency and robustness of the effect has come under question. Until a video game would prove the theory correct. Enter the surprise indie game sensation of 2020 - Among Us. Among Us is an online sci-fi murder-mystery game created by a small development team called Innersloth, It was originally released back in 2018, but didn’t really have many players for the first 2 years of it’s existence. That’s changed a lot in the last few months. The game has blown up, and is perhaps the most talked about and played game of 2020. The game is set on a spaceship base (and other a few other maps) which contains a group of crew members where there is, among them, an imposter who has to sabotage the base and get rid of everyone. Everyone else (the crewmates) has to complete their chosen tasks, report fallen Crewmates, and initiate emergency meetings if they witness an impostor doing something incriminating. You would think that the Crew would almost always win since they by far out number the imposter, but in reality that’s not how it works. I’ve witnessed firsthand. In a recent game I was working with the crew to complete tasks when the Imposter sabotoged the ship’s 02 supply. When this happens, the crew has a small amount of time to fix the issue - or else they all lose. It’s a very simple thing to fix and there is more then enough time to do… In this game, nobody did and we lost. What happened there? I didn’t rush to fix the 02 because I was close to a task on my list. I assumed that somebody else on my team would fix it and we would be fine. After completing my own task I realized that nobody had fixed the sabotaged 02, we were in trouble with time running out. I begin to sprint down the halls to reach the room where the fix would take place. During this time I saw others still working on their own selfish tasks. We had all assumed that somebody would fix the issue and so we didn’t need to worry about taking action. And none of us did… Among Us is a video game, sure… but it is also a large science experiment and one that proves the theory of the Bystander Effect to a tee. The psychological dynamic of working as a team to solve problems can really be explored here and for that I think the game has a lot of hidden potential. Thank you to my Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/RealNotFamous for supporting this channel and providing the financial security to keep it running and build into a powerful business to help others! Like & Subscribe for more theories just like this one!