Why Autistic People Cannot Just Walk On By

?“All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to stand by and do nothing.” It is a chilling quote, but entirely true and perhaps more relevant today than it has been for a long time. We all have a responsibility to challenge wrongdoing and help those in need wherever we see suffering.

Yet I have learned today of a phenomenon known as the “bystander effect”. In essence, people are less likely to offer help to someone in need when there are other people around. I suspect that we have all experienced this to some degree. If you are alone and see someone fall, or perhaps struggling with luggage, you are much more likely to help than if there are lots of other people around – you assume (or hope!) that someone else will step in. This is even more likely to be the case when helping out may seriously inconvenience you or put you at risk.

Part of this is completely understandable self-preservation, and a degree of common sense and risk management is important. How many reports have we read of people getting into difficulty in water, and others drowning in an effort to save them, perhaps even when the person in trouble to start with survives?

But it seems a huge problem that when in a group our first instinct is not to help but to try and identify someone else to do so. Now more than ever we surely all need to play our part to help each other in a difficult world.

I came across the bystander effect through reading about research which has found that autistic people are less likely to be affected by it. This comes as no surprise to me at all. Not because autistic people are morally better, or indeed better than other people in any way. But because our fierce sense of justice can make not intervening in a situation harder for us to endure than jumping in.

I experience this on a regular basis, and it often gets me into trouble. I have intervened in disputes between drivers, incidents on buses and trains, and shoplifters being violently apprehended. Not once has it occurred to me to step back and leave it to somebody else to get involved, because I simply cannot walk on and ignore bad things happening around me. It feels like watching a car about to crash and choosing not to grab the steering wheel or hit the brake pedal even when they are right in front of me.

The research suggests that one reason why autistic people are less influenced by the bystander effect is that we are less influenced by social norms. Again, this comes as no surprise to me. It is hard to be influenced by social norms when you have very little understanding of what these are or why many of them exist. It now turns out that there are benefits to this perceived ignorance! And to be absolutely clear, I do not believe in being deliberately rude – I simply do not intuitively understand what I often expected in social situations as many neurotypical people seem to do.

While intervening has led to me being threatened, abused, and I am sure will get me into even more trouble in the future, I cannot and do not want to change. Imagine if we all stopped tolerating injustice whether alone or with others. We are surrounded by big problems, but perhaps they can be addressed by many people taking small stands against them.