Roughly four weeks ago, I pushed past the group of people hovering at the entrance of Harned Hall, scanned my Mississippi State University ID and picked my seat. As I sank into my chair, I marveled at the sheer number of people in the auditorium, a hushed tumult of moving heads chit-chatting, hand-waving and high-fiving. 
I could not help but wonder if the professor, who stood separated from the unruly masses at the front of the room, really had control over these people.
Soon, it felt clear when she asked her first question: “What is a plant?” 
Not a soul spoke for a solid three minutes.
In retrospect, I like to think that every single person in the auditorium would have a relatively solid answer to the question when asked. Surely we all imagined something green and alive. I know someone ate an apple for breakfast, or at least admired the campus daffodils on the way to class.
I am not saying I expected everyone to have a fancy scientific answer. According to Merriam-Webster a plant is “any of a kingdom (Plantae) of multicellular eukaryotic mostly photosynthetic organisms.” The syllable count in that sentence is more than most students say in class on any given day.
However, I did not expect the class to be silent either. And as I sat there, I pondered why no one said a word at first and why the awkward silence prevailed when over 100 people knew the answer. Why did I choose to keep quiet, too?
I believe this classroom conundrum connects to the Bystander Effect. Coined by social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley, the Bystander Effect assessed that larger groups of people avoid helping others in distres. According to Psychology Today, “The more onlookers there are, the less personal responsibility individuals will feel to take action.”

While the Bystander Effect most often refers to intervening against violence, I believe the same motivations prevent students from answering questions. The students in my class did not feel any responsibility to answer the question, so they did not. They assumed someone else would.

I asked Mississippi State University psychology professor Tom Carskadon for his thoughts on the subject as well.

Carskadon explained, “What you are calling ‘the classroom bystander effect’ is a function of two factors: ambiguity and conformity.” According to Carskadon, students often struggle to recognize which questions are rhetorical and that students naturally look to see how their peers respond.
I was particularly interested in the idea of conformity. We all know that people like to fit in with the crowd around them. If not, lululemon skirts and Starbucks coffees would not be all the rage. We would not wear maroon on Fridays or stop by Cook Out every week.
Carskadon said, “The larger the class, the greater the conformity pressure. So, students do what they see all the other students doing, which is to ignore the question.”
Maybe I chose not to answer that question simply because no one else spoke up. But if I had spoken up, would someone else have given an answer after me?
We all sit in our classes, nodding our heads or nodding off to sleep. We believe we do not have to answer questions because someone else will. In our minds, we have no responsibility to our professors or our peers in these giant classes, and I am as guilty as anybody. When faced with an auditorium of peers, I am apparently unable to even articulate what a plant is.
But I do not want to be a fly on the wall or a student without a voice forever. I do not expect everyone to share my enthusiasm, but break the tension, show the faculty we know the answers to some of the easy stuff. I can go first.