The Bystander Effect: The Case Of Kitty Genovese

The Bystander Effect

Why is it so easy to turn away from a problem? To ignore an issue and pretend nothing happened. When we see a crime being committed, the easiest option is to sit back and hope that someone else will step in and intervene, right? The problem doesn’t concern me; I am not responsible to act.
The case of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in the early 1960s is a painful reminder of the crucial need to intervene. Kitty Genovese, a 28-year old daughter of Italian-American parents, was walking home from a late night at work. She was an ordinary working girl—not at all wealthy, nor a member of any elite class—and she had been followed and brutally murdered on March 13, 1964. Winston Moseley—a 29-year-old married man with two children
who had no criminal record prior to Kitty’s killing—ventured off that night on a mission to kill. In his confession Moseley proclaimed, "I went out that night intending to kill a woman" (Gado). As he stalked the victim from her place of employment, he made his move by her apartment complex. As she frantically fought for her life and screamed for help, 38 witnesses failed to come to her aid. During the last 32 horror-filled minutes of her life, Kitty was stabbed 17 times and sexually assaulted by Moseley, and not one of the 38 bystanders called 9-1-1. Some stood at their windows and watched, one yelled for the man to stop, which frightened Moseley and led him to run off, lest he got caught. However, within minutes, when he realized that no one was coming to Kitty’s aid, Moseley came back to finish what he started. She could have been saved. She could have been alive right now. But not one witness made a move during the 32 minutes she had to suffer before she died. The Genovese case, though disturbing, is not unique. The inaction of the 38 witnesses to the murder is described by a psychological phenomenon known as the Bystander Effect. The Bystander Effect is defined by John M. Darley as an effect that “occurs when a person refrains from taking action because of the presence of others…the larger the crowd or group of bystanders, the more likely any given individual is to feel that he or she is not responsible for trying to alter whatever is going on.” According to the Bystander Effect theory, all 38 witnesses in the Genovese case failed to act because they believed that someone else would help—let someone else take the responsibility. It makes one question what they would do in a situation such as Kitty Genovese’s murder. We all like to see ourselves as heroes. We all like to think that we would have intervened and saved the day—or at least called 9-1-1. But in reality, would we really have done anything? Would you have risked the fear or hassle to help a stranger? In terms of social psychology, the Bystander Effect is a crippling response to the loss of individuality faced in large cities. Kitty Genovese’s “case came to symbolize the corruption of modern city life, a life in which everyone is too frightened or too selfish to help another person, a life in which the value of humanitarianism has been forgotten," writes Professor Helen Benedict of Columbia University. The Bystander Effect is the result of the union of three social phenomena: diffusion of responsibility, social influence, and pluralistic ignorance. The marriage of these principles provides the perfect backdrop for the justification of inaction and lack of accountability in these cases.
A common misconception among people is that there is safety in numbers. People feel that danger can be avoided or overcome if they are in a large group setting. However, according to the Bystander Effect Kitty Genovese would have been saved if there was only one eyewitness. When a single person is on a scene of a crime, they feel the responsibility to act because they are alone, and in their mind they are the victim’s ‘only hope’. However, when a crowd of people are witnessing a crime, the responsibility to help is shared throughout the people in the group. Each person feels that the duty to intervene falls to someone else—let someone else take the responsibility to act. Therefore, as the amount of bystanders increases on a scene, the responsibility to react decreases (Kasschau). This social principle is referred to as diffusion of responsibility. To further understand the diffusion of responsibility Bibb Latané and John Darley, two social psychologists, performed a test known as The Smoke-Filled Room experiment. In this experiment the psychologists rounded up volunteers from Colombia University who were told that they were coming in for an interview to discuss “some of the problems involving life at an urban university.” As the subjects came in for the interview, they were directed into a small waiting room where they were then assigned to fill out a preliminary questionnaire. However, in this waiting room they were tested on more than just questionnaires: after just minutes smoke starts streaming into the room through a wall vent. The subject’s response to the harmless smoke was carefully monitored and observed through a one-way glass. They were timed how long they remained in the room before leaving to report the smoke that was filling the room. The subjects were divided into three settings: alone, with two other passive participants (who were instructed to ignore the smoke), and 2 other subjects. When tested alone, 75% of the subjects responded quickly and reasonably reporting the smoke. In a group setting with two passive participants, 10% of the subjects actually reported the smoke. Lastly in a group setting of two other participants, who were also unaware that they were being tested on their response to this situation, 38% of the subjects reported the problem. Many people believe that being in a group setting provides a great opportunity for people to interact and talk through a situation in order to come up with the best solution. However, as shown by Latané and Darley, the exact opposite occurs.
Seeing other people’s passiveness towards the smoke, made the participants decided that the smoke was not dangerous, and therefore can be ignored. To observe how a crowd can force inaction on others, as well as lead each person to overreact to an emergency, is very fascinating. In this case, people did not react to the smoke because no one else from the group seemed to be concerned about it. The responsibility to act in response to the smoke filling up the room was diffused among the individuals in that group: no one person was considered responsible for ensuring the safety of the others in terms of reporting the smoke to the proper authorities. When the participant was alone in the room, he/she felt responsible because no one else was around to take on the responsibility of reporting the smoke.
The Smoke-Filled Room experiment demonstrates the human tendency to relinquish (or diffuse) responsibility when they enter a group environment. This experiment also shows how powerful social influence is on the decisions of an individual. When someone is socially influenced, their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or behaviors also alter. This concept embodies the idea of peer pressure, and also extends further to explain the fundamental causes of this social phenomenon. On a subconscious level, people will imitate the people around them, regardless of their own perceptions on the situation. In a group setting, individuals are influenced by the majority, so they will adopt the particular attitude that the social group holds. This occurs because people start to second guess their own knowledge and opinion, once they realize that their opinion is contrary to the opinion held by the rest of the group.
To further explore this principle, Solomon E. Asch, a social psychologist who received his Ph.D. from Colombia University in 1932, performed a famous experiment to investigate the extent to which social pressure from a majority group could affect a person to conform. The subjects in his experiment were asked to judge lines of different length by comparing them to a set of different-sized lines. The task, in itself, was very simple—every participant was able to quickly recognize which lines were the same lengths. The difficulty came when the participants were asked to do judge the line lengths when they were in a group of people who were confederates to the experiment (the people were knew what the experiment was about and were playing along with the experimenter). The confederates were instructed to give the same wrong answer when they were asked to estimate the line length. The participants saw that the other people in the group gave an obviously wrong answer. Since every person in the group gave the same wrong answer, the participants became uncomfortable (as seen on the footage of the experiment), and seemed to doubt their initial observation. Then, when the turn came for the participants to estimate the line length, the majority of the test subjects gave the same wrong answer that the rest of the group had given. The subjects were visibly upset by the discrepancy between their perceptions, and those of others, and most caved under the pressure to conform: only 29% of his subjects refused to join the bogus majority. This technique was a powerful lens for examining the social construction of reality, and gave rise to decades of research on conformity. (McLeod)
When someone is socially influenced, they are pressured (consciously or subconsciously) to conform to the ways of the crowd. In the mind of the subject the crowd (group) becomes more important than the individual, and the maintenance of the status quo of the group appears to become the highest priority of the individual. The individual changes how they behave because they seek approval and friendship of others. Then thoughts of social reward and punishment make a person chose to do something they are asked to do. The thought of social rewards and punishments lead the people to obey the order from someone they accept as an authority figure. Because individuals’ opinions are swayed so heavily from the people around them, intervening in a problematic situation begins to depend on how the ‘crowd’ is acting. If a woman is being stabbed repeatedly and everyone is merely watching, you might also just watch and not take any action because you are merely maintaining the status quo.
Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, was a researcher who continued Asch’s work and conducted another experiment studying social influence. This experiment focused on obedience of people. His subjects were ordinary people off the street whose jobs ranged from unskilled workers to professionals. The subjects were told that they are participating in an experiment which studied the effects of punishment on test scores. The subjects “randomly” assigned the role of ‘teacher’ while the other participant (who was a confederate to the experiment) was assigned the role of the ‘student’. The student and teacher were led to separate rooms so that the teachers could not see the student. The teachers were instructed by a person in a white laboratory coat (the authority figure) to deliver electric shocks to the student when the he got an answer wrong on a test. Each time the student answered a question incorrectly, the teacher was instructed to increase the level of voltage used to shock the student. The voltages for the shocks ranged from a very mild level—which only caused some discomfort—to a level high enough to be lethal.
At the beginning of the experiment, the teachers administered the shocks to the student without thinking twice about the pain or discomfort they may be causing. As the voltage level of the shocks increased, the level of discomfort of the teachers also increased. At a certain voltage level the student was instructed to yell out and complain that the shocks were painful and that he did not want to participate in the experiment any more. These cries startled the teachers and increased their discomfort. Almost every participant confronted the person in the white lab coat, asking him to check on the student and stop the experiment since the person was obviously in pain. In response to their entreaties, the authority figure in the white lab coat informed them that the experiment must continue and that the teachers will not be held accountable for the pain the shocks brought to the student. Two-thirds of the participants delivered lethal-level shocks to the student after they were told to do so by an authority figure. The authority figure did not threaten the participants to induce them to continue the experiment. Nor did they tell them that they are not allowed to stop the experiment. The participants were simply told that the electro shock was imperative to the experiment that the teachers keep going. The participants were clearly unwilling to knowingly cause pain to the student; however, they were influenced by the authority figure and acquiesced to continue. Even if the instructions that the subjects received did not seem ethical, the majority of the group continued to obey the instructor as they heard the person’s fake screams of pain (McLeod). Diffusion of responsibility and social influence creates an excuse for bystanders to avoid intervening in a situation.
Another key factor in the understanding of the Bystander effect is pluralistic ignorance. Unlike social influence, where an individual conforms to the same opinion as that of a crowd, pluralistic ignorance is “a situation where no one believes, but everyone thinks that everyone believes” (Krech and Crutcheld). In other words, unpopular moral principles influence an individual because they are mistakenly thought to be the view of the majority of the group. The actual thoughts, actions, beliefs and norms of the crowd are misjudged by individuals. This leads the entire group of to act on certain principles because they believe those principles are held in high esteem by the rest of the group. This creates a false group atmosphere in which no one acts on his own principles, and instead obeys the principles he wrongly believe are important to the rest of the group.
Pluralistic ignorance is dangerous when a life is in jeopardy. Intervention is very hard to achieve when the group creates a false atmosphere in an emergency
situation.
A classic example of pluralistic ignorance is demonstrated almost daily in the classroom setting. When a teacher explains a complicated assignment or a difficult concept, he expects that the students will raise questions about anything which may be unclear. Dutifully, after a difficult lecture, the teacher pauses for a moment and asks the students if they have any questions regarding the material. Though the majority of the students in the classroom may have questions, they are hesitant to raise their hands and ask.
This phenomenon appears counterintuitive.
The students are in the classroom to learn. The teacher is more than willing to provide further explanation on the subject if the need arises. So, why do the students hesitate to ask? No hands are raised, and no questions are asked, until a brave soul decides to take a risk—to show that he doesn’t understand. Students interpret the lack of questions from their peers as a sign that everyone understands the assignment or the concept, so they avoid publically displaying the fact that they don’t understand something that seems to be quite clear to the rest of the group. They don’t want to show themselves as being less intelligent: the dunce of the class. The students are afraid of how the others might see them, thus they hold back what they really think or feel about a subject/concept/assignment.
Pluralistic ignorance is not merely holding wrong beliefs about what others think and feel—pluralistic ignorance is the systematic error in norms and a genuine social
phenomenon.
A single person’s action can have a huge impact in an emergency. This person’s decision and the breaking of a norm in a society can mean the difference between life and death. In Kitty Genovese’s murder, the 38 bystanders were unwilling to ‘be different’ and unwilling to get past their deceiving thoughts. They allowed themselves to be influenced by the perceived status quo—to be socially influenced by the neighbors around them. They chose to conform to their surroundings and be ignorant of the truth, instead of realizing a human life was in their hands.
The responsibility to call 9-1-1, or to act in some other way which would have stopped Kitty’s attacker, was diffused among the people in that community. No one felt like they were personally responsible for coming to the rescue of the young woman. Each witness believed that there must be someone else who would take the responsibility: let someone else act. As a result, not a single person stirred.
The unwillingness of the neighbors to act in this horrific situation is magnified by the pluralistic ignorance demonstrated by the group. No doubt that these neighbors were not all bad people. Certainly, most of them probably did not enjoy watching a young woman they knew (however vaguely) getting raped and brutally murdered, right at their doorstep. However, regardless of what each person believed or how they felt about the situation, not one of them acted in a way which would have saved Kitty’s life. The neighbors saw that no one else was rushing down to help the young woman, therefore they all concluded that it would be against some ‘rule’ or custom for them to go down and act. An unpopular common lie was chosen, and a woman’s life was lost. The Bystander Effect provides an explanation as to why nearly 40 people stood idly at their windows or by their doors and watched as a young, defenseless woman was stabbed 17 times in the course of 32 minutes. This theory provides an insight into the reason why nearly 40 adults waited half an hour, listening to the panic-stricken screams of a dying woman, as her last breath was leaving her mutilated body.
While the Bystander Effect provides an explanation for the appalling behavior of the neighbors, it does not provide any sort of justification. Just because a problem is identified and given a name does not mean that this problem is now acceptable in the eyes of society. The inaction of Kitty’s neighbors appalled the national and international community (Gado). People were shocked that no one would come and answer a cry for help. The lack of empathy demonstrated by the neighbors is unacceptable, no matter how well justified in a psychological sense. Intervening in a situation where the life and well-being of another person is concerned, is an essential part of communal life. What is the point of living near other people if they are not willing to help us?
To respond appropriately to a situation three things must happen. First in an emergency we must identify the problem, then accept responsibility and then take action. Taking action and responsibility makes you a hero:
Empathy is a key component of heroism, and in our culture it's on a massive decline. As a society, we're focused on achievements and status symbols like jobs and cars, and we're losing our sense of responsibility toward others. If your primary identity is tied to helping others, rather than your social status, you're much likelier to act heroically. (Carter)
Even though people like to see themselves as modern-day heroes, when they face a conflict their decisions are very selfish, and often not at all heroic. Though our weakness is obvious, overcoming this weakness is difficult and requires much determination and self understanding. Being unaffected by the Bystander Effect cannot be changed by a pill or a magic word. We have to strive to deny being influenced and do what is right—regardless of how that will wound our pride.