THE SELF ASSESSMENT PAPER

Running head: SELF ASSESSMENT PAPER
SELF ASSESSMENT PAPER
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

SELF ASSESSMENT PAPER1
Introduction.
As humans, our actions and behaviors are not free from external influencers. Most of
what we behave can be considered a response to some form of stimuli. At the same time, looking
back at these experiences we are able to realize that the behavior or action also embed certain
key psychological principles that we correspond to unknowingly. In this assignment I have
looked back on my past experiences and tried to select an event which I can analyze from a
psychological perspective. I have been aided in this process by everything that I have learned in
this course. The knowledge that I have gained in this course has significantly helped me
understand the experience better and analyze the event in a manner that makes it sensible from a
psychological perspective. It has also made me wary of my actions and more sensitive towards
making reflective analysis so that I can implement some of my gained understanding in the real
life context as well.
Discussion.
What happened in my life has significantly altered who I am today. The incident that I
have selected for analysis is from approximately five years ago when I witnessed a gruesome
accident on the road. In the event, a small car was trying to take a turn while overtaking a truck
while a second truck was coming from the opposite side. It was unclear what happened because I
wasn’t able to see the car for a brief moment, but I heard a crash and I saw that the small car was
lying upside down. There were two passengers in the car including the driver. The driver was
dead on spot and the other passenger was taken to the hospital in a critical condition. Both of
them were in their early twenties. There were a lot of other smaller incidents associated with the

SELF ASSESSMENT PAPER2
major incident that would not have made any significant impact at that point in time, but looking
back made me realize that those smaller factors, particularly the people’s behavior as well as my
own, makes a lot of difference.
The event displayed certain key attributes from a personal psychological as well as social
psychological perspective. One of the crucial associated events that significantly impacted me
was the inaction of the crowd gathered at the spot. Immediately after the accident, there was a
crowd of more than a dozen people at the spot. They were all speaking to each other, taking
photos on their phones, but nobody immediately proceeded to help the people stuck inside the
car. This is the junction where the conflict between two common social psychological aspects
can be observed – the notion of altruism and that of the bystander effect. Altruism refers to the
voluntary and selfless act of helping other people, often at the risk of one’s own self-interests
(Yamagishi & Mifune, 2016). The bystander effect on the other hand refers to the phenomenon
where, in the period of a certain crisis, the presence of people in the vicinity makes it less likely
for the person in need to receive help (Fischer et al., 2011). Current studies have shown that the
bystander effect has become a more common phenomenon than altruism (Fischer et al., 2011).
The event that I have described above stands as a burning evidence for the predominance of
bystander effect in the society. Needless to say I myself was stunned at the moment because f
which I did not act myself. After two men got close to the car and started trying to get the door
off its hinges, a few other people form the crown advanced to help them and someone from the
crowd called an ambulance.