Whenever someone says “I trust my gut.” I can’t help but think this is shorthand for “I overestimate my ability to make the right call.”

In thinking about the results of the Nisbett and Borgida helping experiment, I can only speculate about my own actions. If someone were choking, I would be inclined to leave my booth and act. But immediately I would be confronted with a dilemma. Act how? Do what? I am not an expert in dealing with seizures and choking. Would I have a makeshift item to wedge in someone’s mouth? Could I assist in propping up their head or holding them or calling paramedics? True, there’s a diffusion of responsibility but this is built upon the fact that a person choking becomes a collective action problem, a division of labor, a coordination of activities, as well as shared divided responsibility. It’s likely people became paralyzed in not knowing where they would fit into that collective action absent cuing and signalizing which is to say, someone projecting as an authority. It’s further complicated because we don’t want to get in the way, interfere, become unhelpful or even increase the chances of a person dying by taking some adverse course of action. It’s a fascinating dilemma which gives rise to the captain or the hero complex, a hope that someone can single-handedly guide our collective actions along this unsteady and dangerous path. Indeed, we often proceed along public situations as if driving along a road on auto-pilot guided by subtle cues, markers, and signals how to proceed. An emergency disrupts that normal flow but like traffic, we slow down or come to a complete halt feeling diminished in our power and capacity to alter our course.