Dougal Sutherland: Clinical Psychologist on the filming of crashes for social media

A psychologist is encouraging the public not to engage in online content like that recorded after a horror crash on Auckland's southern motorway.  

Police are slamming the livestreaming of the crash that killed three people at Ramarama on Monday.  

They say it was recorded before emergency services arrived and showed close-ups of the deceased in the van and injured laying on the road.  

Clinical psychologist Dougal Sutherland told Mike Hosking an interest in death is clashing with social media pressures.  

He says it's a reminder to think twice when pulling out phones to record. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Amid the chaos and catastrophe of this dreful run around
a triple fatal crash that we're finding out that witnesses
are filming and streaming the wreckage. I thought that was disgusting.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
There were close ups of people to ceasing the van
and injured long on the road. And I say to
the people that are filming that, how'd you feel if
that's your family?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
A good question. That's the police of course. So what's
the say about is clinical psychologist Google Sutherlands where there's
dogle morning to you?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, good morning Michael.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
What's the say about us in very general terms? Or
is it just a small group of us that would
I mean, I find it abhorrent, weird, unusual, nutty, strange?
Is that for most of us?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Or what? Look? I think there's a strong human interest
in death and sex. And if you go back historically,
people were always into looking for things like public execution.
So I think there's a human innate human interest in death.
But I think what we see in this situation is

(00:55):
this real gratuitous use of cell phones and social media
to broadcast that further. So I think you've got that
and nates human interest and then mixed on top of that,
you've got this, you know, you've got this social media
pressure where we do everything we can for clicks and likes,
and that makes us popular. And I think you know

(01:16):
now it's sort of the thing to do if you're
at a public event, you pull out a cell phone
and start filming it, whether that's good or bad. And
I think it's a salutary reminder for us to actually
stop and check what the heck we're doing when we're
enter something like this and we've got our cell phone
with us.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
See, it's where the line. Do you film somebody who's
slightly old looking down the street, Then do you film
the fight that breaks out, all the knifing? Then do
you stop on the motorway and film the death? And
so we're discovering where that line is and maybe there
is no line.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah, that's right. I actually there was an incident, there
was a police incident outside my workplace a couple of
weeks ago, and you know, there were thirty people standing around,
and half of them would have had a cell phone
with them. Look, and I think we need to take
responsibility obviously those people that have film, we need to
take responsibility. But we have some power too in this

(02:03):
as consumers. We can block people, and we can unfriend them,
and we can report them to the social media platforms
for filming this kind of stuff. The last thing we
want to do is comment on their social media posts,
even if it's negative, because that will just feed the
algorithm and make them more and more popular, which is
what really helps drive some of that behavior.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Good tips Doigle appreciate it. Google Southerland Political Psychologists for
more from the My Asking Breakfast.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
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