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The social inhibition of helping has been explained in terms of the general processes of audience inhibition, social influence, and diffusion of responsibility. The present research adapted the paradigm used in studies of the attribution of responsibility for an accident to examine a specific audience-inhibition process that may contribute to the social inhibition of helping. Evidence from 2 experiments, with 356 undergraduates, shows that an S who adopted the perspective of a helper following an accident expected to be held increasingly responsible by arriving onlookers for the victim's plight as the number of extant bystanders increased. Results also indicate that there was an objective basis for this expectation: Ss who adopted the perspective of a newly arriving onlooker increasingly attributed responsibility for doing harm to the individual helping the victim in the accident as the number of bystanders described as …