Analyzing The Bystander Effect Of The Kitty Genovese Murder

On March 13th, 1964, in New York, a young woman by the name of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was just coming home from her late shift at work. It’s three a.m., and as she’s walking to her apartment building, she notices a suspicious, hooded man some distance away. Rightfully concerned, she goes to the phone booth, aiming to call the police, but never makes it in time. She’s stabbed in the back, and then in her gut. When her screams cause the neighbors to turn the lights on, all they do

When there is an emergency, why is taking out our phones to take a picture or video the very first thing we want to do? Why do we casually walk by a person who is in trouble, and go about our business as if we did not anyone? Why do we not help or act when someone is getting, but instead we just stand in a crowd and watch? Why do we bury our moral instincts during emergencies? “We witness a problem, consider positive action, and respond by doing nothing. Why do we not help in these situations and put our moral instincts in shackles” (Keltner & Marsh, 2017). We as people are bystanders to the world around us daily, but the question is why? The answer to all the “why” questions is the bystander effect.

38 people witnessed Catherine Genovese get stabbed, in three separate attacks, over a period of 35 minutes in Queens. Even as the assailant returned twice to finish off the job people still did nothing to intervene. This is called the bystander effect. This is a psychological phenomenon that describes the decrease in a person's likliness to help someone in need when there are other witnesses around. As found in most everyday crimes, the bystander effect was also found during the Holocaust. In Night, by Elie Wiesel, the bystander effect is revealed due to one's inability to help others in need because of fear they will be persecuted as well. The Jews of Sighet did nothing to help the foreigners being expelled from the area, Elie could not

In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, twenty-eight year old barmaid Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was murdered and raped on the street in Kew Gardens, New York. The incident did not initially receive much attention until Martin Gansberg's infamous article, "Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder, Didn't Call the Police", was published in the New York Times two weeks later. In reality, only twelve people witnessed the event yet each did nothing to significantly help Genovese until it was too late. The Genovese murder has become the definitive example of the "bystander effect", the social phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to help someone in distress if there are other people present. The bystander effect occurs wherever there is

If you saw someone being attacked on the street, would you help? Many of us would quickly say yes we would help because to state the opposite would say that we are evil human beings. Much research has been done on why people choose to help and why others choose not to. The bystander effect states that the more bystanders present, the less likely it is for someone to help. Sometimes a bystander will assume that because no one else seems concerned, they shouldn't be (Senghas, 2007). Much of the research that has been done supports this definition of the bystander effect. There have also been recent situations where this

Social psychology first examined the phenomena later termed “bystander effect” in response to a 1964 murder. The murder of a young woman with as many as 38 witnesses and none who helped until it was too late. The bystander effect is individuals seeing an emergency situation but not helping. There are many reasons why individuals do not respond: diffusion of responsibility, not noticing or unsure if it is an emergency, and not wanting to be liable if the person still dies are a few.

1. After the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, John Darley and Bibb Latane were in shock as the rest of the city/world that a 28 year old lady could be stabbed in a neighborhood with about 38 by standers or more and say or do nothing. Why didn’t anyone try and help her? How could people stand by and watch this go on? People speculated that the failure of people to get involved might be due more to the influence (socially) that bystanders have on each other. To test this theory, Darley and Latane, two psychologists, decided to conduct a study. “Diffusion of Responsibility” Everyone hopes that someone else will be the first to step up

First ‘The Bystander Effect’, states ‘that individuals are less likely to intervene in emergency situations when other people are present’. Latne & Darley, (1970) cited in Byford J.( 2014 pp 232). Simply put, where emergency situations arise, if more than one person is present the likelihood of someone in distress being helped reduces. This is the ‘diffusion of responsibility’ effect were each bystander feels less obliged to help because the responsibility seems to be divided with others present’. (Byford J., 2014 pp233) An example of Bystander Apathy shown within a video (The Open University 2016).

The reason for this study was due to the death of Kitty Genovese in New York City. She was a young woman who was murdered by Winston Mosley in observance of many spectators who saw the incident from their bedroom windows of an apartment complex. Media went into a frenzy stating that 38 people witnessed the attack but did nothing to assist and did not call law enforcement, however, the story was misconstrued and it was later found that there were significantly less than 38 people observing and at least once person called law enforcement.

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was going back to home from her work at around 2:30 a.m. The murder whose name Winston Moseley followed her until Kitty Genovese arrived at her neighborhood in the Kew Gardens of Queens in New York. After Kitty parked her car a number of feet from her apartment, the murder chased her down and stabbed her in the back twice. Due to the excruciating pain, Kitty Genovese loudly screamed “Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!” to draw the attention for help. One of the neighbors responded a shouting at the criminal from the upper window “Let that girl alone!” Immediately after getting the attention of the criminal, Winston Moseley fled the scene and left Kitty Genovese crawling towards her apartment.

When someone is clearly in need of help you would think people would rush to their aide and help. We’ve seen and heard plenty of stories of people helping others in danger risking their lives. But what about those stories where people just stand by and watch as someone is clearly in need of help. This articles tells of such stories. On March 13, 1964 at 3 a.m., 28-year old Catherine (Kitty) Genovese was returning home to her apartment from work in Kew Gardens, Queens when she was attacked by Winston Mosely. She was raped and stab more than 12 times over a 35-minute time span. As she screamed for help lights in the nearby apartments turned on. People looked out but no one came to help her. More than half of her neighbors heard her pleas for

If only one person, just one, had dialed police and reported the crime scene, Catherine “kitty” Genovese would have had more years to live. But biggest mystery is, why did non even a one of the thirty-eight witnesses make the phone call? It was not a small number of people which became a huge question not only to police and reporters, but to the society as well. As we read or watched this news, most of us probably had a thought, “If I had been there, had witnessed the crime, I would make the call right away.” That is what I thought too, but would really make the phone call if you were one of the witnesses? Because it is easier to say it out loud rather than actually to do it.

They depict an experiment where a woman leaves the room and goes into an area where she can not be seen, but she can be heard. She then feigns an injury to provoke a response. [The experiments results were twenty-six individuals waited alone reacted to an accident seventy percent of the time.] Then they reenacted the same accident with individuals in a group, and only twenty-percent offered the person in distress their assistance (Darley and Latane 770). After the experiment, the individuals that did not respond said that they did not want to embarrass her because they thought that it was just a minor injury.

The bystander effect is both a social and psychological phenomenon in which an individual’s inclination towards showing helping behaviours are minimised by the influence of other people. Research has found that the more people acting as bystanders in a situation, the less likely it is that helping behaviours will be demonstrated. However in the correct conditions, where conditioned cues increase self-awareness, it is possible to reverse the bystander effect phenomenon. The bystander effect is prevalent in everyday life, and often decorates the news, shocking the world, especially when authority figures such as police men and women succumb to the effect. Diffusion of responsibility, ignorance of others interpretation of an event and self-consciousness are all social processes which appear to lead to social inhibition of helping behaviours and one of the main theories of the bystander effect is provided Latané and Darley (1970) whose cognitive model provides a series of decisions that can lead to social inhibition. The bystander effect is influenced by the conditions an individual is in when an event occurs, for example the bystander effect appears to be most dominant when an individual is in a group of strangers with low group cohesiveness. FINISH

Diffusion of responsibility is a phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to take action against distress or feel the need to be of assistance within the presence of a crowd. When an individual is in a large group, they may feel it isn’t their own responsibility to impose because it is also shared by other onlookers. Diffusion of responsibility also goes hand in hand with the by standard effect in which goes in depth of the social stigma of the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help an individual in distress.