Psychology · Level 3 · 170 words

The Quiet Crowd

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

A man collapses on a busy sidewalk. Common sense says a large crowd is good news, because more people means more chance of help. Careful studies find the opposite pattern. The more witnesses there are, the longer the average person waits before acting.

The usual explanation has two parts. The first is diffusion of responsibility: when twenty people see the same emergency, each one feels only a small share of the duty to act. The second is social proof. Nobody wants to overreact, so each person glances at the others, sees calm faces, and decides the situation is not serious. Everyone is reading a calm that everyone else is also faking.

This is not a story about cruelty. In the same studies, those very people help quickly when they are alone. The crowd does not remove kindness; it removes certainty.

The practical lesson follows directly. If you need help in public, break the crowd apart. Point at one person, describe the problem, and ask that person for one specific thing.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. Which sentence best states the main idea?

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B. People in a crowd act more slowly because responsibility is shared and calm faces suggest there is no emergency.
The passage names two causes, shared duty and social proof, and states clearly that cruelty is not the explanation.

2. According to the passage, how do these same people behave when they are alone?

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A. They help quickly.
The third paragraph says that in the same studies those very people help quickly when alone.

3. Why does pointing at one person and asking for one specific thing work?

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C. Because it gives one person the whole duty and removes the doubt about whether help is needed.
The advice undoes both named causes: the duty is no longer shared, and the situation is no longer ambiguous.

4. In this passage, diffusion describes:

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B. a duty spread so thinly across many people that each feels only a small share
The colon after diffusion of responsibility defines it as each person feeling only a small share of the duty.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.