INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND GROUP PROCESSES Crowded Minds: The Implicit Bystander Effect Stephen M. Garcia and Kim Weaver Princeton University Gordon B. Moskowitz Lehigh University John M. Darley Princeton University Five studies merged the priming methodology with the bystander apathy literature and demonstrate how merely priming a social context at Time 1 leads to less helping behavior on a subsequent, completely unrelated task at Time 2. In Study 1, participants who imagined being with a group at Time 1 pledged significantly fewer dollars on a charity-giving measure at Time 2 than did those who imagined being alone with one other person. Studies 2–5 build converging evidence with hypothetical and real helping behavior measures and demonstrate that participants who imagine the presence of others show facilitation to words associated with unaccountable on a lexical decision task. Implications for social group research and the priming methodology are discussed. The bystander apathy effect is generally regarded as a well- established empirical phenomenon in social psychology (e.g., Dar- ley & Latane, 1968; Latane & Darley, 1968; Latane & Nida, 1981). A person who faces a situation of another person in distress but does so with the knowledge that others are also present and available to respond is slower and less likely to respond to the person in distress than is a person who knows that he or she is the only one who is aware of the distress. The research demonstrating this effect, entirely appropriately, has manipulated the perceived presence of others and consistently has found this effect. Tradi- tional theoretical accounts, such as the diffusion of responsibility explanation, focus on explaining how other actors present in the immediate situation influence would-be helpers’ responses. A question left open that the present research seeks to begin to answer is at what level of calculational ideation this effect exists. In plainer English, does it depend on the respondent’s calculations, either conscious or not, that there are other persons present who might help, or, at the other extreme, is it possible that simply imagining others may induce a similar mental state of diffused responsibility, regardless of whether those others are available to respond? Drawing on this latter perspective, our suggestion is that merely priming the presence of others at Time 1 can affect helping behavior on a completely unrelated task at Time 2, even when the primed others cannot possibly contribute to the helping task. If this is so, then the bystander apathy effect is not one that always must depend on a calculational effort but rather one that can be brought about by the priming of the presence of groups and the resulting mental state that is induced. Thus, real or imagined persons need not be built into the facets of a helping behavior situation for bystander apathy to occur. Bystander Apathy The classic bystander intervention studies (e.g., Clark & Word, 1974; Darley, Teger, & Lewis, 1973; Latane, 1970; Latane & Darley, 1968, 1970) have consistently shown that the presence of others inhibits helping behavior. However, current theoretical ac- counts stipulate that the immediate or imagined presence of others exerts its influence on helping because these others are involved in the situation at hand. In fact, if individuals know that immediate or imagined others cannot possibly help, then bystander apathy will not occur; individuals will behave as if alone (Bickman, 1972; Korte, 1971). Along these lines, investigators have put forth several theoret- ical accounts of the bystander intervention findings. Diffusion of responsibility accounts (Darley & Latane, 1968) reflect the notion that as the number of people present in a situation increases, each individual feels less compelled or responsible to help. In fact, with Stephen M. Garcia, Kim Weaver, and John M. Darley, Department of Psychology, Princeton University; Gordon B. Moskowitz, Department of Psychology, Lehigh University. Stephen M. Garcia was supported by a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship and by a graduate fellowship from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. We thank Deborah Prentice, Susan Fiske, Mark Hallahan, and Max Bazerman for their insightful comments and suggestions. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Stephen M. Garcia, Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-1010. E-mail: smgarcia@princeton.edu Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2002, Vol. 83, No. 4, 843– 853 Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.83.4.843 843