Miep Gies: Why Do People Help Others?

Even after 70 years, the world is still transfixed by the heroism of Miep Gies, who risked her life to help Frank’s family and other families from the Nazis, providing them with food and other necessities. Many have argued that altruism (selfless act to increase someone’s welfare without regard to one’s self interest) does not exist because no one can explain the Holocausts, wars, terrorist attack and torture. But few people have asked why do people help others? Why would Miep Gies risking imprisonment, torture and even death to save others’ lives? (Batson 2014). While it is clear that raising the question of the existence of altruism opens a Pandora box of complex issues, answering the question is fundamental in understanding human nature,

According to the empathy altruism hypothesis, empathic concern (emotional response of compassion, sympathy and pity caused by witnessing someone who is suffering) evokes altruistic motivation to increase that person’s welfare (Stocks, Lishner and Decker 2009). In one of the few studies that was done in real life setting, Bethlehem et al. 2017 investigated if helping behaviour is driven by empathy, in which they had one of their confederate pretending that he was physically injured after falling from a bicycle. By comparison between bystanders who stopped to help from those who did not, the results concluded that people sometimes act altruistically due to moral principles (the right thing to do was to help the person who dependent upon them). On other occasions, individuals were sensitive to the feelings and thoughts of other persons because they believed that they had a personal responsibility to take an action. However, factors including empathy levels, physical appearance of a victim, ambiguity of need and severity, location (rural, urban) and hurriedness have an impact on acting altruistically (Bethlehem et al.

This principle states that the more individuals who are present to witness a critical situation or someone in need to help, the smaller the chances of offering help to that person; as it happened in Ms. Genovese’s case, who murdered after 38 witnesses failed to help her (Fischer et al. 2011). The concept of we-ness (a sense of belonging) with relation to the bystander effect claims that a bystander decision of assisting the victim is done after a series of analysing and understanding the emergency situation to ensure their ability to carry out the required behaviour (evaluation apprehension) and the action is accepted by the majority of people (pluralistic ignorance) (Levine et al. 2002). The bystander effect theory provides a clear explanation of how acting altruistically can be determined by personality, group cohesiveness and ambiguity of