On March 13, 1964 a woman by the name of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was coming back to her apartment in Queens, New York at 3:00 a.m. when she was impaled to death by a serial killer. According to the news, the said attack was about 30 minutes long. During the attack, Kitty Genovese screamed for help numerous times. The killer left the scene when the attention of a neighbor was attracted. Ten minutes later, the killer returned to the scene and murdered Genovese. It came to attention that 38 people witnessed the attack and murder, but all thirty-eight failed to report it until after the murder. This ordeal got the attention of many people including scientists and psychologists who wanted to figure out why this occurred. Later, the events that were published by the news were found to be false. It seemed as if the news was experiencing the bystander effect as well, because their information did not contribute to the actual facts. There were not 38 witnesses to the crime, but several had heard the screams and a few calls were made to the police during the attack. But there was still talk about something that affected the minds of people during emergency situations. This phenomenon has become known as the Bystander Effect. There were several cases that are fairly similar to the Genovese one. As well as the Genovese case, these occurrences attracted the attention of many scientists and even the news had something to say about “apathy.” Is the bystander effect real? My hypothesis is that the bystander effect is in fact, a real everyday occurrence that limits the help offered by people. This is due to the number of bystander present during a given situation. The Bystander Effect is the social psychological idea that refers to cases in whi...
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...though the researchers weren’t looking for it, he results represent ideas that can help the bystander effect in a situation. Smaller numbers increase the percentage of realization when it comes down to an emergency. The victim, if cohesive, actually plays a big role in causing the bystander effect as well. When a victim is unable to verbally communicate with bystanders, it lessens the chance of help. If a victim is capable of communicating, the help given could be more efficient. This is because it can help break the diffusion of responsibility. A victim looking a bystander directly in the eyes can even spark a quicker reaction in them. These are all ideas that psychologists still study today, and many even consider learning about this phenomenon a requirement.
The bystander effect plays a key role in society today. More and more people ignore a person in distress.
The bystander effect refers to the tendency for an observer of an emergency to withhold aid if the:
... so is sacrificial to one’s rights, it puts them in an undesirable position where they may be harmed as well, and success at being an upstander is not guaranteed. Perpetrators tyrannize those who are unable to stand up for themselves; like how predators seek out the vulnerable preys. Hence, instead of having bystanders to stand up for the victim, the victim should stand up for him/herself. In addition, unlike what Lehrman believes, bystanders are not the most dangerous to the victim; the perpetrator is. Saying that bystanders are the most dangerous is is like saying that if one witnesses something, then he/she is a criminal. Consequently, saying that bystanders should stand up for victims against perpetrators is illogical and naive. Concisely, it is not another’s responsibility to ensure one’s safety and wellness; instead, it is one’s responsibility to do so.
All in all, if we do not stand up then we only affirm the perpetrators, and if there are too many that affirm perpetrators instead of standing up for the victim, bystanders can prove to be more dangerous than the perpetrators.
Kitty Genovese case led to the development of the 911 emergency call system and inspired a long line of research led by psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley around the time of 1970 into what circumstances lead bystanders to help someone in need. They discovered that, the more people available to help, the less likely any individual person would help—a phenomenon they called the “bystander effect.” If you are the only one around when an elderly person stumbles and falls, the responsibility to help is yours alone, but, with more people present, your obligation is less clear. Latané and Darley called this the “diffusion of responsibility” (CSI). A more recent case of the bystander effect was when assault victim Marques Gains laid motionless in the street due to by a hit-and-run; traffic whizzed past along with a few people stopped and seemed to stand over Gaines, who was crumpled near the curb on North State Street. No one tried to lift him from the pavement or block traffic. The lack of action by passers-by cost the hotel cocktail server his life after a cab turned the corner and drove over him. Experts says that a traumatic or odd event occurring in a public setting triggers an array of social and cultural cues and, combined with human nature, often leads to the lack of action by witnesses
Rutkowski and colleagues (1983) showed that group size only decreased helping where bystanders were unacquainted, but facilitated helping where there was high cohesion and acquainted individuals. This can be explained as groups being more likely to conform to the social responsibility norm of helping when there is high group cohesion (Rutkowski et al., 1983). Additional evidence provided by Levine and Crowther (2008) showed that group size encouraged intervention in emergency situations when bystanders were acquaintances. Moreover, Levine and Crowther (2008) found that where bystanders and victims share a salient social category membership, group size could increase helping (Levine & Crowther, 2008; Swann et al., 2015). Drawing on the self-categorisation theory, the results support that individuals are more able to empathise when their identity is attached and fused to their group membership. Consequently, salient group-based identity would increase a bystander’s likelihood of intervening. These studies show that Latane and Darley’s finding that groups reduce helping behaviour is not conclusive. Instead, there are implications that the effects of groups depend on situational factors and the importance of the group to
Everyone unconsciously follows the crowd and obeys until one person steps out to help then they all help. With obedience to authority it’s the same thing of feeling like you have to obey even though what you could be doing is inhumane or hurtful to others. Both of these experiments show people looking to follow and feeling as if they have to conform and do what they are being told whether it be an unconscious/ silent agreement or a spoken
The term of “bystander effect” was coined to explain the lack of action in an emergency situation when more people are nearby. Psychologists had tried to explain the absurd phenomena for years. Finally, in an eventful lunch, American psychologists Darley and Latane discussed to show and explain why such an event occurred. They designed an experiment where participants were asked to sit down in individual cubicles and could communicate with other subjects over an intercom system. There was actually only one real participant in the study; the other participants were pre-recorded voices, including one person that had a seizure. The researchers manipulated the...
...g factors such as fear of consequences for not obeying, human nature’s willingness to conform, perceived stature of authority and geographical locations. I also believe that due to most individual’s upbringings they will trust and obey anyone in an authoritative position even at the expense of their own moral judgment. I strongly believe that Stanley Milgram’s experiments were a turning point for the field of social psychology and they remind us that “ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process”. Despite these findings it is important to point out it is human nature to be empathetic, kind and good to our fellow human beings. The shock experiments reveal not blind obedience but rather contradictory ethical inclinations that lie deep inside human beings.
"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act"(Blass, 2009, p101). This is what Stanley Milgram, an American social psychologist, said after conducting the famous obedience experiment. The participants of the experiment were told to deliver electric shocks ranging from 30 to 450 volts to the other person. The participants could see the other person suffering as the intensity of the shock goes up. They could either follow or deny the order from the instructor, but the instructor kept telling them to raise the shock at each level. With this study, Milgram compared and contrasted the relationship
However, that opposing argument can be found as hypocritical. If a person was getting robbed in an ally and they saw many witnesses taking no action they would likely be upset by the fact of no one is offering any assistance to them. Bystanders should put themselves into the shoes of the person in need and ask themselves how they would expect others to respond if they were the one in need. Often time’s bystanders take no intervention because of the diffusion of responsibility. “When there are four or more people who are bystanders to an emergency situation, the likelihood that at least one of them will help is just 31%” (Gaille). Another statistic shows that 85% of people who were bystanders would intervene if they knew or at least though they were the only person present in the situation. Often the only thing keeping people from intervening in bystander situations are other people. It is important for bystanders to understand the statistics of the people around them in order to create action because often times they do not realize that if they were to intervene other people would likely support them in the situation. Bystanders need to make it a personal responsibility to intervene in situations for the good of other. If people were to always take action the amount of bullying, sexual harassment, crime, and many other significant issues within a society would drastically
... (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377-383.
The bystander effect is a social phenomenon, whereby individuals are less likely to help when others are present. This emerged following the murder of Kitty Genovese, 1964. Manning, Levine and Collins (2007) state, ‘this iconic event focused research attention on the psychology of helping and how groups act as impediments to helping.’ (pp. 555). Theorists argue the more bystanders, the less likely people help. Arguably, one cause of the bystander effect is diffusion of responsibility, this is the idea that when a task is presented before a larger group,
Smith, K. D., Keating, J. P., & Stotland, E. (2012). Altruism Reconsidered: The Effect of Denying Feedback on a Victim's Status to Empathic Witnesses. Retrieved from APA PsycNET: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/57/4/641/
In the real world, this experiment has a lot of examples that should be taken note of. For example, communication as a whole has much more of an affect on us than we are willing to admit. From this article alone, we can see that it can help to alleviate pain and help to soothe patients. Just simply from having better nonverbal communication skills, the impact on others is
In general terms, the bystander effect has been highly associated with Genovese’s murder. However, Manning, Levine, and Collins (2007) found