Would you risk your life to save another?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2020

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever broken up a fight? Or pushed someone out the way of an oncoming vehicle, only to be hit by it yourself? Most of us probably haven’t taken as many risks as listener Alix, who has put herself in peril to save strangers on several occasions, and she wants Crowdscience to investigate why. At a time when medical professionals have to weigh up the personal dangers of working on the frontline of the Coronavirus crisis, it’s a particularly timely question. Marnie Chesterton finds out why it’s a good thing that children push the boundaries of what’s safe during playtime, because it makes them less anxious adults. And she questions the existence of the so-called bystander effect, discovering how evolution has ensured we’re a much braver species than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. But she hears from some social scientists who say there’s no such thing as a ‘hero’, however likely they are to intervene to help others.

The virtual reality experience in this programme was created by the Human-Computer Interaction Lab of the University of Udine, Italy

This programme has been updated since its original publication to correct an editorial error.

Presented by Marnie Chesterton Produced by Marijke Peters

Transcript

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0:00.0	Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of
0:07.0	Happiness Podcast.
0:08.0	For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want
0:14.4	to share that science with you.
0:16.1	And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley.
0:19.4	I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that
0:25.5	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.5	The car drove into the crowd and I remember thinking about make sure you go over the car rather than under the car, which I did.
0:40.0	Would you risk your life to save another? I saw that he was coming and I didn't think it was possible for everybody to get out of his way because there was a lot of people and some of the people in the crowd were slow moving there was kids and there was a woman in a wheelchair nearby
0:58.4	I think I thought if if he saw me it would make it real to him that he was driving into a crowd of people.
1:04.5	Would you run towards a couple of tons of machinery to try and stop others being hurt?
1:09.2	It wasn't going super fast and then it was accelerating at the time that it hit me.
1:14.0	That's Alex, a crowd science listener and Good Samaritan.
1:18.0	I'm Marnie Chesterton from the BBC World Service, a grade-a scaredy cat, I'd definitely run from a speeding car.
1:27.2	Alex seems to be cut from different cloth.
1:31.2	Her brush with a car left her needing physiotherapy for a year afterwards and it's not a one-off
1:37.3	incident in her life.
1:39.3	One occasion there was a man attacking a man who was in his 80s and there was 50 people in the room
1:48.6	standing around just like frozen and watching and nobody else could move except I was able to move and I put myself in between them and that was all that took.
1:59.4	As soon as I did something it seemed to unfreeze other, but other people just stood there because they were just too shocked, I think.
2:06.0	I want to know why different people react differently in crisis situations, why some people will charge into the danger while others
2:16.7	charge away.
	...

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