What do they have in common? What separates them? When it comes to the two, schizophrenia and the bystander effect have very little in common. Schizophrenia is a chronic mental disorder that gives humans delusions where the bystander effect occurs when an event occurs and how a person reacts to it. Schizophrenia usually has a mental reaction that is generally recognizable as being well...delusional and not by choice. Even though the bystander effect is a choice, the only comparison these two have in common is how humans react to it. How schizophrenics react to their disorder and how a spectator reacts to the event happening around them. And because they are reacting to a situation, whether it is delusional in the case of schizophrenia and the bystander effect is very different from a real situation as in the case of the bystander effect, but it is also what makes the two different. Schizophrenia causes a person to react differently because they have no choice. Schizophrenics live in their own little world. The bystander effect is how a person reacts in a "real" situation, while schizophrenics, when bystanders, have the ability to react to a situation in a more mental way.