Kitty Genovese Syndrome: Do People Use The Bystander Effect?

Catherine “Kitty” Genovese, the girl who was murdered, saw a man outside her apartment building she had never seen before. He followed her down the street as she walked towards her door, and before she could get there, the man snuck up and stabbed her. The thirty-eight people living in Kew Gardens watched their neighbor get attacked and stabbed three times. None of the neighbors called the police, not until after the murder was committed. One neighbor stalled the murder by screaming out his window telling the man to stop, but he too did not call the police. When asked why they did not call the cops, many of the people said they simply did not want to get involved, or they thought someone else called. Martin Gansberg argued that if some of Kitty Genovese’s neighbors called the police when they saw her get stabbed, they could have saved her life; because of this, people need to

One of the first experiments done with the bystander effect was a test to see if people would help a woman in distress. It was performed by John Darley and Bibi Latane where individuals are exposed to a woman in distress while alone, and in a group of people. The findings of this experiment were that 70% of people helped out the woman while alone, but when in a group, only 40% of people helped the woman. When the people were asked why they did not help, again, the answers were that they thought someone else would help. One of the main reasons behind the bystander effect is something called the diffusion of responsibility. Diffusion of responsibility means that someone will not react to help because they think that others will help first so they do not need to do anything, or they might feel that they are unqualified to help and think other people there are better to help. In any case, someone does not need any qualification to call the police or proper