If you collapse on a busy street, your odds of getting help are worse than if one person sees you. This is well documented and thoroughly counter-intuitive.
Psychologists call it the bystander effect, and it runs on two mechanisms.
The first is diffusion of responsibility. With one witness, the duty is entirely theirs. With forty, it is one-fortieth each — and one-fortieth of a duty is easy to set down.
The second is pluralistic ignorance, and it is the more interesting one. In an ambiguous situation, people look at others to decide how serious it is. Everyone is looking calm because everyone is checking whether anyone else looks alarmed. The group talks itself into normality without a word being exchanged.
The same thing happens in offices. A project everybody privately knows is failing survives for months because each person reads the others’ silence as confidence.
The fix is known and almost comically simple: destroy the anonymity. Point at one person and give them one instruction. You, in the blue shirt, call an ambulance. Assigned responsibility cannot be diffused.
It works in meetings too. “Someone should look into this” means nobody will.
