By Caitlin Bull
An Apparently Homeless Young Woman Sits Crying in a Doorway, Ignored by the World. Photo by Arty Smokes
On March 13th, 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was attacked by a man with a knife as she arrived home from her late night shift as a bar manager in Queens. For the next half hour, Kitty’s deafening screams of, “I’ve been stabbed! Please help me!” pierced the air around her apartment complex. The attacker, Winston Moseley, was startled by signs of activity in nearby apartments and fled the scene twice before he finally killed Kitty during his third attack. He would later confess that, “It didn’t seem like anyone was going to stop me!” Moseley was right; of the 38 witnesses that were aware of the murder as it progressed, not a single one called the police until Kitty was already dead.
After the New York Times published an article revealing the apathetic behavior of the 38 witnesses, moral outrage erupted in the city. Life magazine wondered if people were becoming callous and immoral. Newspapers blamed the bystanders for the murder, threatening to print their names and addresses. People refused to believe that the witnesses were not abnormal barbarians.
In response to this hysteria, two Columbia University researches, John Darley and Bibb Latane, delved further into the idea of bystander apathy, or “not helping.” In a 1973 experiment, recruited participants had to walk from one building to another, where they would give a lecture. In some scenarios, these students were told that they were in a hurry or that they had a few minutes to spare. The experimenters positioned a moaning man along the students’ path. The amount of students who helped along their way was highest in the low hurry situations (63%) and lowest in high hurry (10%). Ironically, students who believed that they were about to give a talk on being a Good Samaritan went as far as to step over the injured man. Darley and Latane concluded that ethics might simple become a luxury as our lives become more hectic.
Further studies reveal that the explanation for bystander apathy may have less to do with human callousness and more to do with a tendency to take social cues from those around us. In a 1969 experiment by Darley and Daniel Batson, subjects were placed in a room to fill out questionnaires. The room slowly filled with smoke. There were three conditions: one in which the subject was alone, one in which three naïve subjects were in the room, and one in which one naïve subject was placed with two confederates who noticed and ignored the smoke. The alone subjects calmly reported the smoke 75% of the time. In the confederate and naïve bystander conditions, only 10% and 38% of subjects reported the smoke, respectively. In some of the confederate instances, the smoke grew so thick that the subject look concerned, got up, and checked the vent. However, upon seeing the how calm the confederates remained, they went back to their forms.
More recent studies have demonstrated the effect of social priming on degree of generosity. In 2002 study titled “Crowded minds: The implicit bystander effect,” researchers discovered that subjects in a group consistently pledged less money to a charity than those with one other person. It was easier for the grouped people to give less money because chances were the entire group would follow suit; when only one other person is involved, mob mentality does not exist.
Psychotherapist Mark Tyrrell describes a situation in which he witnessed a boy having an epileptic fit at school. Though the boy was writhing and foaming, Tyrrell and every other classmate failed to get help. Bystander apathy is prevalent in children. Thornberg (2007) observed that children often run by others who have fallen down during a game, watch as other children harass a mentally handicapped student, or passively witness fights break out. Children experience what researchers refer to as a diffusion of responsibility; because no other student takes the initiative to be the first helper, chances of the other students helping are reduced. Children also tend to place a lot of importance on social roles. When interviewers asked children why they did not help others, many said that the teacher is supposed to help.
Scientific studies have shown that group size often reduces an individual’s propensity to act. Just as in the case with the smoke, individuals will often take cues from those around them rather than apply their own logic to the situation. When someone is alone, such as in one condition of the smoke case, they are more likely to act because doing so does not involve “breaking rank.” The people who watched Kitty Genovese die were not monsters; they simply told themselves that “Someone else must be dealing with this!”
References
Darley, J. M., & Batson, C.D. (1973) “From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior. JPSP, 27, 100-108.
Garcia, Stephen M.; Weaver, Kim; Moskowitz, Gordon B.; Darley, John M. (2002) Crowded minds: The implicit bystander effect, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 843-853
Latane, B., & Darley, J. (1969) Bystander “Apathy”, American Scientist, 57, 244-268.
Martin, Douglas (1989, March 11). About New York; Kitty Genovese: Would New York Still Turn Away? [Electronic Version]. The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2009 from <http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/11/nyregion/about-new-york-kitty-genovese-would-new-york-still-turn-away.html>
Thornberg, Robert (2007) A classmate in distress: schoolchildren as bystanders and their reasons for how they act, Social Psychology of Education, 10, 5-28.
Tryyell, Mark. Bystander apathy – it’s none of my business! [Web Page] Uncommon Knowledge. Retrieved February 24, 2009 from <http://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/articles/bystander-apathy.html>.
Although this is a horrible situation and there have been many similar involving the concept of mob mentality, but is this concept both detrimental and beneficial to our survival? Mob mentality is used to describe different behavior of individuals when in a large group. Speaking in terms of evolution, the mob mentality or “herd behavior” is useful when a group is in danger, or feels threatened in some way because everyone in the group will react similarly therefore increasing chances of survival. In society we use the term mob mentality to describe selfish and horrible acts that occur because we revert to our most primitive instincts which are selfish and tells us that our most important goal is our individual survival. However, because we live in an advanced society with an established concept of morality, the mob mentality or herd behavior animals need to survive clashes with our ethical selves. A good example of this is on November 28th a Wal-Mart employee was trampeled to death by a stampeding crowd on Black Friday.(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/28/national/main4637170.shtml)
Comment by pysch10502student — November 29, 2009 @ 9:49 am
To what extent could the “bystander effect” really be a coping mechanism to survive in a changing social structure? As humans, we are a social species, and these examples of apathy and diffusion of responsibility seem like some sort of immoral act. But we have also shifted drastically in social structure, evolving from large groups dependent on one another for survival to small family units. When we have shifted to a species that lives to reproduce, say, only two children, the necessity for survival changes from needing food, shelter, and safety for the community to needing food, shelter, and safety for your immediate family. Is it possible that the bystander effect is really just an adaptive trait? What is the evolutionary advantage for having a father stop and risk his own safety to help a complete stranger? How does a mother giving her loose change, the change that could buy a little more food for her children, to someone outside her family help her family’s survival? Being a Good Samaritan could be a disadvantage to our survival and the diffusion of responsibility could be the human race’s response to a shift in social structure. A family’s very survival could depend upon each family member’s bystander apathy.
Comment by Elena Hershey — November 30, 2009 @ 10:56 pm
The section about the children not helping the boy because they felt that it was not their responsibility seems closely related to Milgram’s eperiments on obedience. The children often reported that the teacher was supposed to be the one to help when asked why they did not help their classmate. In Milgram’s experiment, a “teacher” (the subject) thought they were delivering increasingly high electric shocks to a “learner” when they got a answer wrong. The learner was actually an actor, and the shocks triggered certain audio responses. The experimenter would be in the room with the teacher, and the learner would be in another room, but the teacher could hear the learner’s response to the shocks. 65% of teachers continued giving shocks until the voltage was lethal. When they protested, the experimenter would tell them they had to continue. This experiment shows a more extreme instance of people feeling less responsibility for their actions in the presence of authority. The children did not feel the need to help the epileptic boy becuase they thought the authority figure should. Likewise, the “teachers” may have felt less responsible for their actions beause an authority figure was ordering them.
Comment by Rachel Anspach — December 1, 2009 @ 12:09 am
Source:
http://www.youtube.com/index?ytsession=m-9TstccyuEKSZ_psKMJdtBXdK6Y1v6tn_IgQUmThKKDgACw8VjfTm_pRk7l6h35z-VesRq7l1teGNH2cIZNv8nUuK-houKoyO6CxkltJ9edXR18XSNoLl73GdO9km-fypA7PYhOPa41rpidyd0KBWXQpoGS_XUSldBnKa3GuDxIi9cI-5_BIRg7Mliaeu_XIZ0oPARImwh4wOCZRY2P8lvZ_KJIMZR_9bx7x8QdLdPJiQXNhY1-tHT4MvUVkFFuZmD1HHrw8ifmFswhzQEAZ9YZdvxBwjshgUItiztGnBprk9QXe3JAkSy-GP5hN0rkDjsLH9Pvgz4PdLY3Q6jNpKLI7VlV6syEKE3RikflKXQ
Comment by Rachel Anspach — December 1, 2009 @ 12:16 am
The idea that “group size often reduces an individual’s propensity to act” is very true and to me deals with how people act within groups in general. In Caitlin’s post she explains that people won’t stand up for themselves and what they believe in if others don’t stand up first. Similarly, experiments show that people in large groups tend to doubt themselves if they are in disagreement with the others in the group (as Caitlin explains in her final paragraph).
One experiment that shows this was run by Solomon Asch in 1955. He took one college student and placed him with two actors in a room. He showed them cards with four lines, one that they had to match with one of the other three. The two actors deliberately gave incorrect answers which stunned the college student. Students became uncomfortable, paused, and showed clear signs of uncertainty regarding their choice. Some students went to far as to deliberately answer incorrectly just to match the actors’ choices.
Just shows how people give into peer pressure in both acting and not acting. Great post Caitlin!
http://www.panarchy.org/asch/social.pressure.1955.html
Comment by Zach Nanus — December 1, 2009 @ 10:18 pm
The “bystander effect” is something that I feel kids are unintentionally taught in school and in the home. I remember one time, two people I knew where fighting, my first instinct was to pull them away from each other. However, when the teachers came to “handle” the situation I was reprimanded along with the two fighters. Even though it was clear that my actions were to break up the fight I got in trouble. The teachers told me that I should not try to deal with the situation because it had the potential to be dangerous and it was their responsibility. Throughout the rest of middle school and high school deans and teachers have explicitly stated not to become involved in fights, even if you are trying to stop one. The sad fact is when we were children, adults told us not to deal with certain things. I think that when we grow up these things stick with us.
Comment by Psych 105 student — December 2, 2009 @ 12:07 am
As I was reading this, this was initially my exact thought. We are told when we are young not to intervene in a dangerous situation, but we are also told to find an adult to help. We are instructed to keep ourselves safe, but I don’t think the necessary outcome of this is bystander apathy. What is encouraged is a reliance on a more powerful figure, which may be another issue, but makes sense to encourage in children. As long as the “if you see something say something” mentality is encouraged, I think that schools are doing an adequate job trying to eliminate the bystander effect.
Comment by Hannah — May 16, 2013 @ 12:45 pm
One of the most important characteristics a person can have is knowing when take action and help someone in need. However, the the “bystander effect,” seems to counteract the propensity to engage in forms of altruism to help others. It would be interesting to push the findings of this study further and look at how “group size” comes into play in different environments, such as a small suburban neighborhood or a busy New York street. It seems to be that exterior forces have a great effect over whether or not someone will help another person who is clearly in need. For example, if you hear your neighbor screaming next door, then is it more likely, because you know them personally, and that your community is small and close-knit, that you will help them? Or, say you were walking down a crowded street in a busy city and you observed someone (who you don’t know) slumped over against the sidewalk. Do you keep walking or stop? It seems more likely that you’d keep walking simply because the personal rewards of altruism are not big enough.
Comment by Wendell Winton — December 2, 2009 @ 9:41 am
The mentality behind a child’s ignorance of a fallen classmate and that of a resident of the apartment next to the place where Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death are backed by very different concepts. The children able to pass by a seizing classmate can clearly see that no one else is stopping to help, and are in fact choosing to pass by in order to conform to the actions of the whole group. The residents of the apartment building who chose to ignore Kitty’s cries did not seem to ignore the problem because everyone else was ignoring it, but because they figured someone else was handling it. They could not see what the other residents were doing, or if they had even noticed the screams, and so were operating on the assumption that someone else had probably done something rather than refusing to provide aid because they would stand out from the crowd if they did so. The situations this past summer in which an elderly man was hit by a car and ignored as he lay in the sidewalk and where a patient in a waiting room died in the presence of other patients and staffers are further evidence of the presence of bystander apathy.
Comment by Mariah Minigan — December 2, 2009 @ 10:00 am
The power of the situation can be found almost anywhere. I work at a summer camp and there is an activity there called “challenge course.” Before campers can climb the rock wall or ride the zip line they must achieve several goals with their group. Groups are challenged with games such as “the human knot,” and rearranging where they are on a log without walking on the ground. Immediately, one can observe that there are leaders and followers within a group. Often a leader will suggest something and the group will persist in carrying out this plan even when it continually fails. Frequently in the discussions afterwards campers comment that they had different ideas but did not voice them because, “nobody would have listened.” Many are afraid they will not be taken seriously and that others will judge their opinions,assuming that they should not even try to speak up, but rather give up and go with the crowd.
I have even seen this mentality in different species. When I was younger I attending horse-back riding lessons. We would guide horses in a single file line along the ring. Once, the lead horse was ill and could not be ridden, so when the rest of the horses were taken to the ring they refused to be at the head of the line. Despite their rider’s best efforts, whichever horse that was in front forced their way to the end of the line. It was not the horses did not know what way they were supposed to go, they simply were so accustomed to allowing the leader to take on the responsibility of lead to the group around the ring. When they followed the lead horse, it removed any thought, it became a easy, blind,following, they no longer had to think about their actions are be responsible for them. It was congitively efficient. This is consistant with the children in your post who put the responsibilty on the teacher.They were accustomed to allowing the teacher to handle any situation, and therefore removed themselves from responsibility.
Comment by Sarah Backal-Balik — December 2, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
The idea that bystander apathy results from “mob mentality” and our tendency to take social cues from those around us has to do with cognitive economy. This obedience allows us to work less hard as decisions are made for us by those around us, and our behavior is validated if everyone is doing the same thing.
However the adaptive traits of cognitive economy, or mental short cuts, gets us in to a lot of trouble. The Kitty Genovese tragedy is one example. Another is stereotypes and prejudice. These are two mechanisms of cognitive economy, the act of classifying people based on generalizations requires less energy than thinking about each person as a true individual. Needless to say, stereotypes and prejudice against others causes endless social inequity and injustice throughout our society.
It is frightening to think that an adaptive trait like cognitive economy may lie at the root of many of our most serious societal problems today. This makes me wonder–if bystander apathy, stereotypes, prejudice, and other functions of cognitive economy are adaptive, if we have specifically evolved to think this way–are prejudices (what I consider societal ills) such as sexism, racism, agism, etc., necessary and inherent in human beings? And if so, can they ever be overcome?
Comment by Catie Hall — December 2, 2009 @ 8:58 pm
The proposition that generosity and concern are governed essentially by convenience seems especially true of today’s society. Indifference has become an increasingly powerful presence in contemporary times, as Rudolf Stichweh posits in his paper “The Sociology of Indifference” (http://the.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/51/1/1). Because we have socially developed to where interaction with strangers has become unnecessary; Stichweh points out the difference in premodern and postmodern cultures, specifically how we now tend to function on a “friend vs. enemy” trend without the “unknown insider” status anymore. Because of this, we tend to ignore people in pain or trouble with whom we don’t have any intimacy.
Comment by Devin Griffin — December 2, 2009 @ 10:07 pm
That we sometimes step aside and choose not to help is not really because of our lack of conscience. It can be because we are threatened by an authority, as suggested by Rachel; it may be because of the diffusion of responsibility; or it may be because we are more concerned with our own priorities. But I think it is mostly due to the herd behavior — when we see others are not offering help, we conclude that the inaction of others implies help is not needed. And this behavior is aggregated when the size of bystanders is large.
I think everyone would agree that people were generally friendlier and more helpful in the past time. Even nowadays in third world countries, people are indeed poor, but they don’t avoid strangers and offer help if they need. I remember I was tremendously impressed by peoples’ hospitality and generosity to help when I travelled to Cambodia. The ‘bystander effect’ seems less evident in developing countries. People tend to step up and help the need, and others follow suit (they even share the responsibility). Are the level of development and living standard two of the factors behind the apathy? Are we becoming more passive as we become more individualistic and feel less bonded with others in the modern world?
A good supplementary video on Kitty’s case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozmWS6xYEw&feature=related
Comment by Jacqueline Tam — December 3, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
In my opinion, bystander apathy has more to do with the actions of the people around us than with our own morality. A story similar to that of Kitty Genovese occurred in Hartford, Connecticut in the spring of 2008. A 78 year old resident was the victim of a hit-and-run situation on a local road, and although numerous cars drove by the accident, only 4 people even called 911. The reasons for this are most likely the same as the reasons for the inaction of Kitty Genovese’s neighbors during her murder. I think first and foremost, people who are not connected with the victim are less likely to think the situation is in desperate need of their help. They either assume that the entire accident is not urgent or that someone else will take action. However, a problem arises when everyone begins to think that way and no one takes action, which is what happened in the 2008 case. This apathy resulted in the death of the 78 year old. Another plausible reason that people might not go out of their way to help the situation is their own sense of safety. Kitty Genovese was screaming cries of murder and how someone had stabbed her, so many people would not jump at the chance to get involved in a situation where they could get hurt as well, especially for someone they didn’t know. Similarly, the hit-and-run case had an elderly person lying in the middle of the road. Most people are not selfless enough to risk their own life in order to help a stranger. While this is by no means a positive trend of humanity, I do not think bystander apathy can be a complete indicator of humankind’s morality. People are much more likely to help a situation if they have witnessed the entire event or if someone they know is in trouble.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5015458&page=1
Comment by Sarah Morrison — December 3, 2009 @ 10:49 pm
In response to Elena’s comment, I can see this “bystander effect” being something humans have gradually adapted to over time. As she said, it might be beneficial to a family to avoid being a Good Samaritan and save the fews coins that could go to paying for food or other things to aid the family’s survival. But in a situation like the Genovese case, a dangerous situation could be detrimental to another family. A parent could hold back from helping in order not to put themselves in danger as well. If something were to happen to the parents, the children of the family could be in danger as well. That’s not to say the neigherbors of Kitty Genovese couldn’t have called the police, but I’m interested in how Elena viewed the bystander activity in this survival point of view.
Comment by Jenna Kronenberg — December 4, 2009 @ 4:36 pm
An article published in 2007 by American Psychologist stated that the story of Kitty Genovese was, in fact, an exaggeration and that there was no evidence of the fact that there actually 38 witnesses and that the witnesses that were there actually saw or heard much of anything. The authors of the this article’s idea was that the exaggeration served as a good means to teach about the bystander effect. But one does not have to go very far back in history to find an unexaggerated extreme case of this effect. Stanley Cohen’s “Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering” from his book States of Denial, applies theconcept of the bystander effect, or “passive bystander effect” to larger issues such as the Holocaust. Cohen enumerates the ways in which we “know” something is wrong but voluntarily or subconsciously ignore them. In a particularly gruesome example of a conscious back-turning of the Germans during the Holocaust, Cohen writes, “Despite great effort to hide the evidence, the odour of burning flesh wafted over the surrounding community; residents sealed their windows at night to shut out the smell” (150). A one Frau S., when interviewed on the matter, replied, “I am happy when I hear nothing and see nothing of it. As far as I am concerned, they are not interned. That’s it. Over. It does not interest me at all” (151). Whether the back-turning is intentional or not, according to Cohen, it “expresses the ultimate wish not to know”. Again, the stress here is not that there exists a lack in cognitive ability, but rather a moral ability.
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2007-13085-001&CFID=26440548&CFTOKEN=70254451
Comment by Jesse Greenberg — December 5, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
Although there is evidence that humans do not always help others for example Kitty Genovese that is mentioned at the beginning of the blog. Although it is a terrible thought that humans do not help one another at moments of need there have been Psychologists that study the instinct for helping in human beings. According to the New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?_r=1&emc=eta1) and to Dr. Tomasello’s book “Why We Cooperate,” Dr Tomasello is a developmental psychologist; children who are only 18 months old are willing to help an adult who they are not acquainted with if they see that they are struggling. An example of this is opening a door or helping the adult find an object. These acts of kindness appear before the children have been taught the rules of behavior. It is not only apparent in our culture it is seen in cultures with different rules of kindness which then makes it clear that humans do have a instinctive nature to be kind to others.
Comment by Paloma Torres — December 6, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
Interestingly, this article seems to tie in with an article I’m reading in a philosophy class entitled “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” by Peter Singer. Essentially, the author argues that we are morally obligated (which is pretty strong language for his demand) to aid those regardless of distance. He makes no distinction between saving the child drowning in the lake in front of you and saving the child dying from malnutrition in a Sudanese refugee camp.
Upon reading this article, I was torn– there seems to be a huge psychological difference in the case of a child drowning before my eyes and a child starving in a “far-off” country. This article states this difference neatly– bystander apathy.
We feel that the immediacy of the drowning child demands action, while we can rationalize that the whole world is responsible for the child in Africa. It’s the whole “I can’t take on the world’s burdens” mentality that allows us to ignore the cries of a stabbed woman, and the less publicized and less immediate cries of those who desperately need aid.
Works Referenced
Singer, Peter. “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs. Vol. 1, No. 3 (Spring 1972), pp. 229-243. Princeton University Press.
Comment by Arianna Gass — December 6, 2009 @ 10:44 pm
The bystander effect is an unfortunate part of psychology that is a part of our society. From an outsider’s point of view, I would like to think that I try to intervene in any way possible, of course, it is quite possible that if I was in the situation, I wouldn’t do anything.
The bystander effect made it into the news recently, when a girl was leaving a high school dance and sexually assaulted in the parking lot by up to ten people while ten to fifteen others just stood there and watched.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/27/california.gang.rape.investigation/index.html
I’m quite curious as to why this happens though, what is the actual evolutionary reason that causes one to ignore others that are in distress? Is it because self-preservation was more important than all else?
Comment by Aki Nishimura-Gasparian — December 7, 2009 @ 1:22 am
I wonder if this in some way relates to shyness, or a general discomfort with being in the spotlight – if you are the one to act, all eyes are suddenly on you. This discomfort could also be justified evolutionarily – standing out in this way makes one a target – it is certainly safer to stick with the herd. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/19/home/main4531225.shtml) This type of fear of standing out would certainly be useful if one were avoiding predators, but it is less so in modern life – we still want our alpha dogs to take care of the problems.
Comment by Mollie Baker-Salisbury — December 7, 2009 @ 3:20 am
I first learned about the story of Kitty Genovese in the context of diffusion of responsibility – that everyone who was watching her assumed somebody else must be calling the police. Diffusion of responsibility allows people to not act in situations that are intense or dire. However, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Solomon Asch’s conformity study. In this study, one subject was grouped with several confederates at a time and given a “vision” test. The subject was set up to answer the question last after the confederates had given their answers. In certain trials, the confederates gave a blatantly incorrect answer to a simple test. In the trials in which all of the confederates before the subject had answered incorrectly, the subjects answered incorrectly on 32% of the questions. However, when there was a dissenting confederate involved, the subjects felt more comfortable in providing the “correct” answer and almost always did so. Maybe we need more people to stand up!
Comment by Laura Bowles — December 7, 2009 @ 9:35 pm
While young children claimed they didn’t help because “the teacher was supposed to,” it is interesting to note that the effectiveness of peer pressure does not decrease with age, but rather increases well into high school. As the child grows and separates from his or her family, but still has not formed his own specific identity, he or she strives to adhere to a particular social group he or she finds appealing.
One study conducted by several researchers confirms this observation by concluding that children’s success in high school is more dependant on the social “cliques” with whom they associate rather than their family values or other more imminent factors.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0005/ai_2699000579/
Comment by Austin Ford — December 7, 2009 @ 10:01 pm
I think much of this problem of not acting is due to the fact that when something that terrible happens, people are often in so much shock that they don’t know what to do. You become paralyzed because something so intense and horrible is happening right in front of you. During a CPR class I was taught that after checking for someone’s vital signs, you should specifically point to someone and tell them to call 911. As terrible as it sounds, it’s easy to just stand there and not realize that you should be doing something.
Comment by Blair Mills — December 7, 2009 @ 11:20 pm
This article’s descriptions of behavior fit with my own experiences.
Once, on our way to school (in 7th or 8th grade), my mom, brother, and I watched a small automobile run into the back of a big car-transportation truck at a stoplight. The truck continued, not realizing it had been hit, while the car sat incapacitated in the middle of the intersection. My mom picked up her phone to call the police. I was surprised and nervous. I didn’t consider ourselves to have any authority or role in the situation. I think I subconsciously assumed that since the accident had happened in the public domain, it was common knowledge, and the appropriate authorities were thus aware and responding to it.
My mom explained this notion of “bystander effect.” She described a mugging many people witnessed but which nobody stood up to stop, assuming that since others were watching without action, no additional action was necessary.
The presence of a group lessens the feeling of personal responsibility: a lone, original witness is solely responsible for any action. But when more people conglomerate, their feeling of accountability diffuses and they are contented in their action or inaction. If their decision is wrong, there are other recipients of shared blame. But if an individual stands up alone in an action or opinion, they stand the risk of bearing the entire weight of its consequences.
Comment by Sandy Wood — December 8, 2009 @ 3:21 am
Even though the fascinating and disturbing case with Kitty Genovese is thought of as the perfect example of the bystander effect, there are some flaws in how the case was originally presented. The 1964 New York Times article that made the case so well known had numerous inaccuracies and most recently a 2007 article of American Psychologist states that the case is very misrepresented (http://psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/bystandereffect.htm). In reality, of the 38 people that witnessed the case only 3 had any chance of seeing the actual stabbing. There were also only 2 attacks and one took place inside a hallway, where only one possible person could have seen it. It was also very hard for people that did see something to know exactly what they were seeing. There were many trees and not enough light for people to really tell what was going on. For the few witnesses that admitted to actually seeing her, they never saw any signs of violence or blood on her. There is also evidence that suggests that a 15 year old boy did in fact call the police after the first attack, however he reported seeing Moseley running and Kitty stagger away. He assumed she had been beaten or was drunk but regardless he told his father and the police was called. There were many more discrepancies with the New York Times article so its interesting to know that so much psychological research and discovery on the bystander effect was done largely because of an incident that in reality was not as unbelievable as it appeared.
Comment by Maria Zapata — December 9, 2009 @ 10:52 pm
source:
http://psychology.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=psychology&cdn=education&tm=561&f=10&su=p897.6.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.oldkewgardens.com/ss-nytimes-3.html
Comment by Maria Zapata — December 9, 2009 @ 10:53 pm
I’d like to address another type of conformity: that of conforming to a pre-conceieved notion or stereotype of a certain role. In Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment, normal, everyday college students, when given a role of a prisoner or a guard in a prison simulation, completely transformed their behavior in order to fit into how they thought they should act. The guards humiliated and dehumanized the prisoners, and the prisoners soon became depressed. The guards were not given any training and were not told how to act. Their actions were drawn from what they assumed the behavior of prison guards to be.
http://www.prisonexp.org/
Comment by Christine Marsico — December 10, 2009 @ 8:16 pm
It is interesting to me that scientific studies have shown that group size often reduces an individual’s propensity to act. Could this also be applicable to societies and governments at large? Governments and large intergovernmental agencies have been blamed for being bystanders to large scale killings and genocides, for that matter, especially during recent times. The Clinton administration has been criticized for failing to intervene and take bold action in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives during the genocide in Rwanda during the early 90s. Is this another application of the bystander effect?
Comment by 105 student — December 12, 2009 @ 11:42 pm
Many examples of social diffusion discuss situations where only one person must act to right the situation (e.g. helping a stabbed woman). But what about situation where everyone has to be on board? The movement for a green Earth comes to mind (http://www.sfeap.org/images/6Americasrecomm.pdf). People will stray from habits that are good for the Earth because “someone else is doing it today” or “it’s just one time.” However, if all but one person stop recycling for a day, there is a massive buildup of garbage on Earth that day!
Fortunately, this is partially balanced by what Zach just talked about: social conformity. If a majority of a neighborhood or community starts recycling, more people will usually jump on the bandwagon.
Comment by Sam Ballard — December 12, 2009 @ 11:43 pm
I’m not particularly surprised. The need to conform is deeply ingrained in us. It is the “safe” thing to do. It is the action which, generally speaking, we associate with the least amount of risk. As such, it is very easy to do nothing while at the same time hoping someone else will do something. The more people there are, the greater the pressure to conform should be, it seems to me, and simultaneously, the easier it is to think “someone out of all those people will have to do something.” Furthermore, as mentioned by another poster, I think this effect is greatly enhanced when you have someone to lay some of the blame for unfortunate consequences of inaction on. The children blamed the teacher – an authority figure. In the Milgram experiments, as another poster said, the teacher could project some of his guilt onto the experimenter, who was serving as an authority figure.
Comment by Psch 105 student — December 16, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
I guess a more succinct way of putting what I said above is having a large, inactive group or an authority figure to project the guilt on diminishes individual responsibility.
Comment by Psch 105 student — December 16, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
This article describes “bystander apathy” as people looking out for themselves and not helping fellow human beings. But isn’t it human nature to protect oneself first? In the case of Kitty Genovese, bystanders had no way of knowing if her attacker was still there before they called for help. If I for one heard a stranger screaming that they were being stabbed, I would probably call 911 from a safe distance as opposed to running in to play hero.
I would also like to mention that the Good Samaritan Law doesn’t always protect bystanders that do try to help. In 2004, a Californian woman in an automobile accident sued her rescuer for yanking her out of a wrecked car and thus, rendering her paraplegic. The woman won the case because the state’s Good Samaritan laws didn’t protect her. If people were wary to help before, cases like this make bystander apathy even more prominent. Would you help a stranger at risk of being sued or injured?
Comment by Michelle Harvey — February 3, 2010 @ 10:27 pm
While the mob mentality often leads to riots, or simply a lack of initiative and helpfulness in a human being, it can sometimes be a good thing. The bystanders all lacked initiative and allowed Kitty to be killed by her attacker without so much as a call to the police. However some mobs can be proactive and lead to positive changes.
A group of protesters can send a message and make an impact. For example, my family and I went to the circus once when I was 12 years old. On our way in we saw a group of people holding signs that said “WHIPS” and they were talking to people about animal cruelty. While many people just hurried by them some others stopped and really took to heart the message they were conveying.
Similarly human rights movements can be traced back to a small group of people who share one universal idea and with lots of work and with others joining in, even if they are only doing it because everyone else is, can lead to great things.
http://everything2.com/title/Mob+mentality%253A+The+good%252C+the+bad%252C+and+the+just+plain+silly
Comment by Patty Walton — March 1, 2010 @ 11:32 am
I feel like ‘mob mentality’ is a very important part of present society. Thinking about the actual idea of doing what everyone else is doing seems to have evolutionary ties that can be seen in most every animal trying to survive in the wild. Animals very rarely will stray from a herd or act differently than the rest of their species because, if they do, they will most likely become dinner. For example, schools of mackerel will sometimes form a giant sphere when being preyed upon by swordfish and other predators. Since the rest of the school forms a ball, the individual mackerel will too, and, surprisingly, many survive the feeding.
Now that homo sapiens have evolved, I feel like the instinctual ‘mob mentality’ has too. The ‘mob mentality’ has become more of a social pressure, or influence. It makes sense that it affects children more than adults. Children are immature in every way: physically, emotionally, and, most specifically, socially. They are not familiar with what is right and what is wrong, so they often look to others for example. From this idea stemmed the old saying, “If he jumped off a bridge, would you?” Children just don’t know any better. The example with the fight in the school yard makes perfect sense. The children had never experienced a situation like that before and looked to each other. One boy probably remembered back to the time when his older brothers got in a fight and his mother had to break it up and used that as a means of justification to stay out of it.
The ‘mob mentality’ happens quite often in hockey. When one teammate gets in a fight, the entire team joins in. The social pressure of not being in the fight while your teammates are trading punches with the enemy forces an all out brawl. Sometimes, though, things get taken a little farther than just that. ( http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2006/10/24/hockey-brawl.html ) In this story, junior hockey players got in a full team brawl on the way to the locker room. But, the interesting thing was that parents on both sides jumped in the fight and actually began to fight as well. Another example of youth adhering to the ‘mob mentality’ is this crazy youtube video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqC6B9K8-40 ). Ten-year-old Russian hockey players involve themselves in one of the biggest fights I have ever seen. Two boys start fighting and things escalate from there. The socially immature boys most likely saw the fight as the norm and did a “monkey-see-monkey-do” type of thing.
Comment by Casey Rice — March 1, 2010 @ 3:12 pm
The story about Kitty Genovese was terrible. I could not believe that people honestly thought, “Someone else must be dealing with this!” I know there was research provided that showed why people think like that, but it just seems crazy when it comes to someone’s life. By me at home, a worker was trampled to death on Black Friday (http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/28/2008-11-28_worker_dies_at_long_island_walmart_after.html). Instead of people helping, they ran to the sale sections.
I am both surprised and not surprised in the bystander idea. Many people do not know what to do in certain situations. This can turn to tragedy, like in the case of Kitty.
Comment by Lindsay Haggerty — March 4, 2010 @ 2:33 pm
In response to Michelle, I think that the point that the article was trying to make was that no one in the surrounding apartments took the path that you would have preferred: they were all at a safe distance and had access to phones, but none of them called 911. I don’t think that Life magazine expected bystanders to try and fend off an armed attacker.
An article by the Canadian Safety Council reports that bystander apathy depends on a number of factors, including perceived risk and ability to help. Fortunately, the rise of the cellphone has given most people a relatively risk-free way of reporting crimes to the police. Unfortunately, sense of responsibility only extends to people we perceive of as in our own “group:” prior to the murder of two-year old James Bulger, eye-witnesses saw him being taken against his will by two other boys, but they thought the older boys were brothers and interpreted the situation as one between family and outside of their responsibility. Therefore, a way to combat bystander apathy could be to broaden people’s sense of responsibility as to include all people, regardless of their social ties or lack thereof.
http://archive.safety-council.org/info/community/bystander.html
Comment by Heather K — March 5, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
I remember that when my high school health class was taught CPR, we were instructed that, should we ever need to use such a skill, to pick out a particular bystander, should there be any, and specifically ask them to call 911. Perhaps by directly addressing one person, we are more likely to snap that person out of a state of apathy. I do wonder though if people are more likely to stop and help someone else who is in serious danger if they themselves have experienced a similar scare, if they are more capable of empathizing with another’s situation.
Comment by Matt Allan — February 21, 2012 @ 11:19 pm
The times that I’ve heard about bystander apathy have mostly been from reading and watching the news, where gruesome and often times cruel tales of crime are recounted. My first reaction is typically one of outrage and yes, a bit of self-righteousness. How could they just stand idly by? I think. This may be a common reaction from much of the public, but to be honest, I always ask myself if I really would have done something. I feel as though we’re taught to adhere to this kind of bystander neutrality from a young age. I remember being told by my parents to not draw attention to myself and stay out of people’s way. I have no doubt this was a coping mechanism they readily adopted after immigrating to the US, but I’ve witnessed many parents admonishing their children to keep quiet and politely mind their own business. If we can implement more activities in the classroom or at home that emphasizes helping others when you can, and at the same time preserving that instinct to protect oneself, perhaps there will be less cases such as Kitty Genovese’s.
Comment by Nancy — April 4, 2012 @ 8:24 pm
I wonder whether perhaps a bystander’s reaction to an upsetting event is culturally informed. That is, are bystanders less likely to be apathetic in cultures that place more emphasis on paying attention to others? I was not able to find any research to support this idea, however it seems to me that it is possible that more collectively minded cultures, such as Japan, may see different results when testing the bystander effect in comparison to more individualistic cultures such as the U.S. Even if collectivism and individualism don’t spur different effects, it is still possible that factors such as age, socioeconomic background, or gender could yield varying results in the responses of bystanders.
Comment by Janou Hooykaas — December 9, 2012 @ 3:48 pm
I do a lot of work with an anti-bullying and anti-child abuse organization and the results that they have found as well as my own observations are quite similar. In the case of bullying, no one wants to be the lone child that stands out as getting or offering help because that would make them the next target. When no one else is around, however, they are far more likely to help the child in distress. What they fail to realize, however, is that by standing up for their fellow classmate, or even just fellow human, they are not only helping the other person but they are sending a message to the bully/attacker. As Moseley showed when he thought that there was activity going on around him and fled, he was not looking for additional confrontation with those that came to her aid. While this study points to the reasons for being a bystander as either being immoral, apathetic, or following social roles, I wonder if in some cases (such as with Kitty Genovese or situations on playgrounds) it has to do at all with misguided self-preservation?
Comment by Samantha — April 11, 2013 @ 10:23 am
As awful as bystander apathy seems–and in spite of its frequently deleterious consequences–I think the behavior sometimes has beneficial consequences and is as much rooted in our survival instincts as in mimic-ing others’ actions. In New York City, I find it most safe to shut myself off to others. Tourists often are bewildered that natives never say “Good morning” to one another or never acknowledge one another’s presence. It seems selfish as it would similarly seem so to ignore an individual’s pleas for help. And the absence of altruistic actions could appear to be a New York ritual in the way that because the group collectively refrains from such actions, each individual will follow their example. Nevertheless, it could be argued that this is based in our need to survive. When younger, I felt no need not to approached strangers and interacted with them, despite the absence of these interactions, daily. Yet when older, from my parents’ instruction and my experience, I learned that it was safer to be passive in this setting, unless it was certain that my interactions would be helpful (i.e. I would call the police, but I would not assist a person in a fight on instinct. Maybe because this could exacerbate the dilemma but mostly because I instinctually fear getting hurt). In this way, humans’ stand-off approach may be based on a the pressure of the multitude’s actions but arguably also hinges on survival instincts. One may learn that other people are the source of danger and being reclusive can ensure survival.
Comment by Lena Josephs — April 14, 2013 @ 3:15 pm
Something that was touched on right at the end there that I would have liked to hear more about is the idea that the observers believed someone else was going to cope with the situation, therefore they needn’t bother. I certainly understand how/why people respond to the norms of the group, as in Batson (1969), even when doing so can have deleterious outcomes for themselves and others. They’re sticking to the group, trying to fit in, ect., ect.
However, placed in an emergency scenario where none of the onlookers know for certain whether or not the proper authorities have been contacted, as in the case of Kitty Genovese’s murder, it’s not so difficult to explain bystanders’ inaction. They’re not necessarily conforming to the callousness of one another (in fact, from what it seems, they’re not even in contact with each other), but, rather, they’re behaving like the children in Thornberg (2007). No one knows who is in charge and, if they could establish that there isn’t anybody (difficult given the aforementioned lack of communication), it then becomes unclear who among these unqualified pedestrians steps up to the plate. This isn’t necessarily apathy, but a break in the civilian line of command. As the school kids in Thornberg (2007) demonstrate, we are raised believing there is a specialist for every emergency and we need only sit back and await their intervention.
Comment by Luke — April 25, 2013 @ 3:53 pm