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6.The tendency for individuals to feel less personally responsible to act in a group setting, because responsibility is spread across everyone present; from the essay: "There is also what psychologists call 'diffusion of responsibility': the sense that someone else will handle it, or that handling it is not specifically your job."
9.A direct, often uncomfortable encounter in which one person challenges another; from the story: "she did not owe anyone a confrontation — that is not her job, not her obligation, not her burden to carry."
10.The dominant feeling or mood of a place or situation; from the story: "The atmosphere in that room changed the moment he said it" — showing how quickly the classroom shifted after the comment.
11.An action taken to prevent harm or stop a negative event from continuing; bystander intervention means choosing to act, whether by speaking up, reporting, or supporting the target; from the story: the narrator thinks about intervention — what it would look like, why it felt so hard.
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1.A person who witnesses an event but does not participate in it; the key question of this lesson is when a bystander becomes a participant through their silence; from the story: "I was a bystander — someone who witnesses something and then has to decide whether to become part of it by speaking or to become part of it by staying silent."
2.To increase or intensify over time, as interest compounds on a debt; from the story: "That's the thing about silence. It compounds."
3.A social phenomenon in which individuals privately reject a norm but go along with it because they believe everyone else accepts it; from the essay: "The psychological mechanism is called 'pluralistic ignorance': the belief that because everyone else is staying calm and not acting, the situation must not be as serious as it seems."
4.Having or showing a prejudice or hostility toward Muslims; from the story: Mr. Brennan's comment about the name and about places "where that name gets you killed" is an Islamophobic statement.
5.An excuse or justification that sounds logical but is used to avoid facing an uncomfortable truth; from the story: "I could feel the rationalization forming even as I rejected it" — the narrator recognizes her own excuses forming in real time.
7.The person toward whom a harmful comment or action is directed; from the story: "make her the target of Mr. Brennan's defensiveness instead of his indifference."
8.Participation in a wrongful act, even if not directly responsible for it; from the title and from the story's final line: the narrator is not the person who said the hurtful thing, but is "also not the person who stopped it."