The Bystander Effect: The Murder Of Catherine Genovese

What would someone do in the event of an emergency that was happening right there in public? Would they jump in and help, find help or do nothing? In incidences like the murder of Catherine Genovese, the 37 witnesses did nothing to help. Because of this event, the behavior that was shown in this event was called the bystander effect. The bystander effect is where individuals offer no help to victims when other people are around. Over the year’s psychologists have studied this effect in different scenarios. Some of the scenarios that psychologists have studied over the years were cases like Catherine Genovese, their own experiments on children’s behavior, and on the public environment where there are a lot of people.
The study of the bystander effect has been going on since the murder of Catherin Genovese. In the “Understanding Psychology” textbook chapter 17 social psychology it talks about the reason behind the bystander effect appears. The bystander effect appears because of other bystanders being present, this is called diffusion of responsibility. Diffusion of responsibility is the belief that responsibility for intervening is shared among the people that are present. In the textbook there are four steps that lead to a person’s decision to giving help. “noticing a person, event, or situation that may require help.”
Darley and Bibb Latené did their own experiment to test the bystander effect the name of the report is “Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility”. In this experiment they had college students come in for an interview and then had someone fake a seizure and see how fast or if any of the students would help the person in trouble with a group of students there for the interview also. The results showed that people in the larger groups times were slower. This happened because of diffusion of responsibility, which is the belief that responsibility for intervening is shared among those