WHY WE ACT: TURNING BYSTANDERS INTO MORAL REBELS (US Edition)
The Bystander Effect: The Psychology of Courage and Inaction (UK Edition)
*Note: Why We Act (US Edition) and The Bystander Effect (UK Edition) are the same book.
Why do good people so often do nothing when a small intervention could make a big difference? Catherine Sanderson demystifies the mindset of bullies and bystanders to show why courage comes at such a high cost, and how we can learn to be brave.
When we are bombarded with reports of bad behaviour every day, it’s tempting to blame evil acts on evil people. But the fact is that in the face of wrongdoing – whether it might be bullying, sexual harassment, a political movement we ardently oppose, or any course of action we view immoral, dangerous or unfair – few of us choose to speak up. As Martin Luther King said, progress and social justice often find their strongest enemies not in the strident clamour of the bad, but in ‘the appalling silence of good people.’
Why We Act draws on the latest developments in psychology and neuroscience, mapping the neural impact of deviating from social norms and group dynamics, to tackle a question that many people have been asking themselves with increasing urgency: why do so many otherwise good people become bystanders to evil, doing nothing to stop bad behaviour?
Sanderson gives practical strategies for resisting these pressures in our own lives, laying out how – from schools to the workplace – people can be nudged into taking action and speaking out.
Courage, it turns out, is not just an innate virtue. A bystander can learn to be brave.
