Merely Bystanders: The Psychology of Courage and Inaction
Catherine Sanderson Sat, Oct 3, 2020 at 8:00pm – via Zoom
Merely Bystanders: The Psychology of Courage and Inaction
We’re bombarded daily by news reports of bad behavior, from sexual harassment to racist attacks to school bullying. It’s easy to blame these acts on evil people, but it’s far more complicated to understand why so many of us fail to speak up in the presence of such behavior. Using research from psychology, biology, neuroscience, and economics, Amherst College Professor of Psychology Catherine Sanderson examines hidden factors that lead most of us to stay silent. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
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