But bystanders diffuse responsibility to help when others are present.
The clans diffuse responsibility and blame through a complicated network of part-time workers, many of them teenagers.
"It would be helpful to diffuse responsibility for this massive undertaking, and share any dissatisfaction with others and not be the sole target ourselves," he said.
Unlike most of his fellow prisoners, Speer readily if somewhat vaguely acknowledged the evils of Nazism and accepted a diffuse responsibility for his own actions.
All the international meetings have done so far is to diffuse responsibility for the crisis, allowing member states to hide behind each other's failures.
Social psychologists point out that humans are prone to what is called diffuse responsibility or bystander apathy behavior, which explains why witnesses of a volatile situation often stand around and do nothing: they think other people, especially those with authority, will act.
Large corporations can diffuse responsibility for illegal activity across a wide organization, making it difficult for prosecutors to prove that executives knowingly and willfully violated the law -- even when individuals clearly broke it.
Big corporations can diffuse responsibility for illegal activity across a complex organization, which can make it difficult for prosecutors to prove that executives knowingly and willfully violated the law -- even when it is obvious that the law was, in fact, broken.
Outsourcing employment to agencies diffuses responsibility.
This first-person plural also diffuses responsibility, encourages ambivalence, and helps us understand how a community of resistance is born.
