Kitty Genovene Case Study

The Bystander effect is a controversial theory given to social phenomenon where the more potential helpers there are, the less likely any individual is to help. A traditional explanation for this Bystander Effect is that responsibility diffuses across the multiple bystanders, diluting the responsibility of each. (Kyle et al.) The Bystander effect, also known as the Genovese Syndrome, was created after the infamous murder of “Kitty” Catherine Genovese in 1964, on the streets of New York in front of thirty-seven witnesses. After studying the Genovese syndrome and doing research on how this phenomenon occurs today, it is clear The Bystander effect is not theory, but actually fact.

The Bystander Effect was first demonstrated by psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley in 1968, four years after the brutal murder (encompassing thirty or more witnesses) of Kitty Genovese. It is a social phenomenon in which observers believe that someone else in a group will intervene and offer help to a victim in need (1). According to these psychologists, there are two important factors attributed to this phenomenon, social influence and a perceived diffusion of responsibility. Social

“Research known as the bystander effect project, discovered that there are complicated set of factors that determine who will assist in life-threating or dangerous situation (p.107)” In short the bystander apathy can be explained simply as bystanders who witness a crime occurring yet do nothing to assist or help. Most people who are put in this situation do not want to get in involved, especially in life-threating situations for fear of putting their own life at risk. However many people are not physically or mentally prepared to see an actual violent or criminal event take place. Studies have found that the more bystanders there are the less likely it is for some one to volunteer to help. In the case of Catherine Genovese there were a total

Bystanders can easily found in real life such as, they can be found in the places like at work, school, on the roads, and other places involving many people. These circumstances aren’t simply ignoring the situation, but their unconscious psychology plays a big role in how they react to an emergency. In this situation, people think someone else can provide help, so that, this results in people remain as the spectators. This phenomenon is called bystander effect, and this is if more witnesses are in an emergency event, the less people are likely to intervene. This bystander effect is often called as, Genovese Syndrome which is named after death of Kitty Genovese, who was murdered in 1964 while a lot of witnesses were in the same place. After this incident, many psychologists conducted many investigations and experiments on this topic in order to analyze bystanders’ psychology in encountering certain situations. However, a lot of research papers focused on the phenomenon itself, rather than talking about how the one on one situation or one to plural number of people can result differently, and how age, gender, and relationship affects psychology of bystanders associating to the topic. Therefore, this paper will explain how the group size and group type affects bystander effect throughout researches and conducting my own survey. Hopefully, this paper can provide the future scope in encouraging the people’s behaviors in encountering the emergency circumstances.

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).

People have a tendency, known as social proof, to believe that others' interpretation of the ambiguous situation is more accurate than their own. Hence, a lack of response by others leads them to conclude that the situation is not an emergency and that response is not warranted. Finally, empirical evidence has shown that the bystander effect is negated when the situation is clearly recognized as an emergency. In a 1976 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Lance Shotland and Margaret Straw illustrated that when people witnessed a fight between a man and a woman that they believed to be strangers to each other, they intervened 65 percent of the time. Thus, people often do not respond appropriately to an emergency situation because the situation is unclear to them and as a result, they have misinterpreted it as a non-emergency based on their own past experience or social cues taken from others.

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.

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

Walking along the busy street of Manhattan, Katie becomes light headed passing out; although she is in a large group of people, no one stops to help. This phenomenon is called the “bystander effect.” A bystander is often anyone who passed by, witnessed, or even participated in a certain situation (Polanin, Espelage & Pigott, 2012). The bystander effect is the idea that the larger the group, the less likely an individual is to be helped. The likelihood of someone getting helped is inversely compared to the number of people who are around witnessing the event at the time. This phenomenon has played a huge role in the increase of civilians failing to be helped in the past years, and is starting to have more light shined upon it. Knowledge of

In the experiment they tested the responsiveness of individuals and how they reacted under stress when first, alone, and then second within a crowd. Each time the people that were under pressure and alone reacted in a higher rate than those in the crowds. Researchers have justified people’s non responsiveness within a crowd, with diffusion of responsibility, in which people are less likely to take action within a crowd, because they feel someone else will take responsibility. On March 14 1964, Kitty Genovese was the ultimate test subject for the Bystander Syndrome, having been stabbed twice in public and left to die on her apartment stairs, but the question that remains unanswered, under matters of a life, is the silence of the crowd truly due to diffusion of responsibility? Or lack of interest and

“Why People Don’t Help in a Crisis” co-written by John M. Darley and Bibb Latané states that there are three primary reasons to a bystander’s unresponsive behavior. In the event of an emergency a person must first take notice of the situation. Then interpret if the scene is truly an emergency and ultimately determine if one has a personal responsibility to help. Darley and Bibb conclude that someone’s reactions are manipulated by how other people around respond to the situation.

In 1964 a woman known as Kitty Genovese was murdered and although she was heard begging for help from 38 neighbors for more than a half an hour, no one decided to help by calling the authorities. The notion of deciding to help those in need is known as ‘bystander intervention’, which raise high awareness after Kitty’s murder (Baumeister & Bushman, 2011). Darley and Latane (1968) decided to further investigate bystander intervention and it was concluded that higher assistance is provided when only one bystander is present within the ongoing situation in contrast to when several bystanders are observing, which is known as the ‘bystander effect’. This becomes evident because several bystanders are less likely to feel responsible for intervening leading to ‘diffusion of responsibility’, which was present in Kitty’s case where bystanders thought that someone else would intervene eventually and thus did not feel accountable to take any action. Diffusion of responsibility was shown in a study by Darley and Latane (1968) in which 72 university students heard other people’s problems. While they heard each person sharing their problems there was also a man who as he informed, was suffering from seizures. At some point the recorded man appeared to experience a seizure and what was observed was that 85% of the participants who believed were alone provided help in contrast to a 31% of those who thought other participants were present. Thus, what can be understood is that people are more likely to help when alone rather than in

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

The by stander effect is a term that came to fruition when Kitty Genovese was brutally raped and murdered in front of her apartment, and 38 individuals witnessed the entire tragedy and turned a blind eye. Researchers were interested in this phenomenon and set out to research the bystander effect further. The bystander effect occurs when an individual’s likeliness of helping decreases when in the presence of others in an emergency situation (Fischer, Krueger, Greitmeyer, Vogrincic, Kastenmuller, & Frey, 2011). The purpose of this study is to measure the level of helpfulness among college age students with emphasis on the bystander effect. The model that this study follows is the Bystander Intervention Model by Latane and Darley. A series of five steps must be followed while intervening in the case of an emergency, the stages are again as follows: (1) noticing the event, (2) interpreting the event as an emergency, (3) making the choice to intervene, (4) knowing how to provide help, and (5) applying the behavior (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2016). As a group, we set out to analyze the bystander effect among college age students, while focusing on how gender impacts the given scenario.

The bystander effect is a social psychological scenario where a person who is in an urgent situation is not given any help by the people around due to the discourage from the presence of others (whatispsychology.biz, 2017). Social psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, introduced the bystander effect in the 1960s after the murder of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who was stabbed to death outside her home in New York City. It took her attacker more than half an hour to kill her, and during that time, thirty-eight people saw her being murdered, and they did nothing to help her. “The responsibility for helping was diffused among the observers” (Darley & Latane, 1968).