Samaritans - II

August 2, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

There’s an early scene in the 1969 movie “Midnight Cowboy.” Joe Buck, just arrived in New York from Texas, is walking up Fifth Avenue and sees a man obviously in need of help lying unconscious on the sidewalk outside Tiffany’s. He starts towards the man, but then notices all the other people walking past as though the man either didn’t exist or didn’t need help. And then, taking his cue from the others, he continues on his way, though with a worried glance back at the man on the sidewalk.

It’s a perfect example of bystander apathy, the topic of the previous blog posting. My point was that bystander apathy arises not from bad individual character traits but from normal social processes: faced with unfamiliar circumstances, we look to others for a definition of the situation. What do we do when something seems unusual but everyone else regards it as normal? (This was a standard set-up for countless episodes of “Candid Camera.”) We may feel uncomfortable, but we’d also feel uncomfortable going against what appears to be the norm.

Sociologist Amitai Etzioni also blogged about the Wichita incident. To his credit, Etzioni doesn’t take the “what’s wrong with people today?” line. He is well aware that if you want to change the amount of some behavior, you don’t get very far by trying to change people’s character. You’re much better off trying to change the situational circumstances.

Etzioni recommends that the US adopt “Good Samaritan” laws (also called “duty to assist” laws) that allow for the prosecution of people who fail to provide reasonable assistance. He acknowledges the difficulties of enforcement (what is “reasonable”?), and he doesn’t try to refute the argument that such laws would have no effect on behavior. Remember those seminarians who saw a man in need of help while they were en route to give a talk about the good Samaritan? (If you don't remember, see the previous entry in this blog.) They were no more likely to help than were others. So it’s doubtful that a law passed by some distant legislature would have had any impact on those people in the Wichita convenience store.

So Etzioni focuses instead on the symbolic function of the law.

Above all, laws have an expressive function. They are one way in which we state what our moral expectations are. They are of special value when, in a growing and complex society, it is unclear what we as a community consider right and wrong.

In other words, the law will make us feel better – it will confirm that our view of right and wrong is the official view. It won’t make us act better.

This is not to say that norms don’t change. “Midnight Cowboy” was originally rated X. (It's the only X-rated film ever to win the Oscar for best picture.) Yet it has almost no nudity, and little profanity (Ratso's “fuckin’ creeps” is the only time the “f-word” is heard), and the MPAA has since downgraded the X to an R, testimony that there has been a change in norms regarding the presentation of hustling, straight and gay.