The Most Important Advice All College Students Need
My advice to parents, as a psychology professor and mom of kids who’ve been there
On Aug. 25, 2017, my husband and I spent the day settling in our oldest child, Andrew, for the start of his first year at college. We went to Walmart to buy a mini-fridge and rug. We hung posters above his bed. We attended the obligatory good-bye family lunch.
Two weeks later Andrew called me. His voice breaking. He told me that a student in his dorm had just died.
The student had been drinking alcohol with friends. He got drunk, and around 9 p.m. on Saturday, he fell and hit his head. His friends, roommate, and lacrosse teammates watched over him for many hours. They strapped a backpack around his shoulders to keep him from rolling onto his back, vomiting, and then choking to death. They periodically checked to make sure he was still breathing.
But what they didn’t do — for nearly 20 hours after the fall — was call 911.
By the time they did finally seek help, it was too late.
This story of college students failing to act in the face of a serious emergency — from alcohol poisoning to sexual assault — is hardly unusual. It’s a common human shortcoming, in fact — it happens in homes, at work or on the street, too. But it’s not inevitable. And understanding what stops students from stepping up and making that call is a crucial step in overcoming this tendency towards inaction.
The hazards of herd mentality
The first step in reacting in an emergency is to figure out what’s going on — and this is often complicated. Is that student just drunk, or actually unconscious? Or in completely different scenarios: Is that a consensual romantic interaction, or sexual assault? Is this a harmless prank, or potentially dangerous hazing?
In many cases, students notice something, but do not know exactly what they are seeing or hearing. This type of ambiguity makes it harder for people to step up and act. And it’s especially hard to do so when you’re an 18-year-old in a new environment and highly driven to fit in with the group. And because they don’t know how to react, they freeze — and instead do nothing.
Social psychologists have consistently found that people are far more willing to take action in the case of a clear emergency than when they find themselves in an ambiguous situation. In one study, researchers compared rates of helping for those who heard an ambiguous emergency — a loud crash in another room — versus an unambiguous one — a loud crash followed by groans of pain. Those who heard the crash and the groan were much more likely to help.
Inaction in ambiguous situations is driven by what psychologists call evaluation apprehension, a term used to describe anxiety caused by fear our behavior will be judged by others. A fear of judgment inhibits college students from speaking up in the face of bad behavior of all kinds. For example, researchers in one study found that the most common reason male students give for failing to intervene in situations involving sexual violence was a fear of being laughed at or ridiculed, and, in particular, a desire not to appear weak to other men.
Evaluation apprehension helps explain why only 19% of people intervene when they see a fight between a man and a woman when they believe they are watching a romantic quarrel — because the woman yells out “I never should have married you” — whereas 65% of people intervene when they believe they are watching a fight between strangers — when the woman yells out “I don’t know you.”
What explains this difference? Intervening in a potentially violent conflict between strangers seems like the right thing to do. But interfering in a domestic dispute may just cause awkwardness and embarrassment for all parties — or at least that’s what our brains tell us.
When facing an ambiguous situation, our natural tendency is to look to others to figure out what’s going on. But here’s the problem: If each person is looking to the people around them to figure out what to do, and no one wants to be seen as the person who overreacts (risking feeling foolish and embarrassed or getting the group in trouble), the person in need may receive no help at all. Inaction breeds inaction.
Overcoming inaction
You, as a parent, can play a big role in preventing this type of terrible tragedy. Educating students about the tendency to look to others — and to misunderstand the factors underlying their inaction — can help students make better choices about all types of behavior. My own research has shown that freshman women who learn how campus social norms contribute to unhealthy body image ideals show lower rates of disordered eating later on, and that college students who learn that many of their peers struggle with mental health challenges have a more positive view of mental health services.
So what do parents really need to do as they send their students off to college, and how can institutions work to prevent tragedies that come from inaction?
Talk to students about the power of social fear — what it is and how it happens. Helping people understand the psychological processes that lead them to misperceive what those around them are actually thinking — that a student lying basically unconscious for hours isn’t a big deal — helps them step up, even when others aren’t.
I’ve now sent all three of my kids off to college, and my focus wasn’t on urging them to treat their roommate with respect or get enough sleep or get good grades or even to go to class. Instead, we talked about psychology: how it’s human nature to look to others to determine how to interpret ambiguous situations and how this tendency can lead us astray. And my fervent hope for all college students who are faced with an emergency — or anyone who faces an emergency for that matter — is simple: I just don’t want anyone to wait 19 hours to call 911.
This piece is adapted from my book, Why We Act: Turning Bystanders into Moral Rebels. If you enjoy reading about psychology, you can also subscribe to my (free!) newsletter, How to Feel Better, and/or follow me on Instagram.
