The Silent Witnesses: Should they be held accountable? Everyone claims there is a moral standard in the world, yet how rarely do you see people living to this standard? Maybe Kitty Genovese would have lived if this moral standard was lived up to in most situations in society. In Queens, New York on March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was raped and stabbed outside of Kew Gardens apartment complex. It started off as per usual with Mrs. Genovese heading home from her bartending job. As she was walking back to her apartment, she was approached by her aggressor and was stabbed twice in the back. Kitty screamed and pleaded for help and only one of her neighbors replied, “Hey! Leave that girl alone from their apartment causing the aggressor to run off. …show more content…
After 10 minutes the aggressor had then returned and frantically searched for Kitty, when the aggressor eventually found Mrs. Genovese he proceeded to then rape, mug, and continue stabbing her for a span of 30 minutes which resulted in her unfortunate passing. No calls were made until around 45 minutes later. Mrs. Genovese could ve still been alive and well to this day if the 32 people who heard her screams had done something besides watch from their windows. If these 32 people followed the moral standard of our society, she would have been saved, but they chose to conform to the bystander effect. An effect placed on people that withholds them from their own individual decisions but instead drives them to follow the majority's decision. This situation is seen in many aspects of our current world and happens at a frequent rate. Could a governing law that would prevent others from “doing nothing” perhaps fix this recurring issue? The Genovese syndrome, also referred to as the bystander effect, is a theory that individuals are less inclined to intervene or take action in situations where there are others present. This was discovered in the Kitty Genovese case, explained earlier in this article. Where 32 people watched Mrs. …show more content…
In order to prevent future catastrophes like this, there should be a bystander law instated into our society that provokes people from being careless and neglectful to situations and forces them to help unless it endangers themselves. If people choose to not help when given the appropriate opportunity, they will have to in turn suffer a hefty fine, or even possible imprisonment. This law would provide sufficient resolutions towards many issues within our current society and make our communities more safe and habitable. Arguers against the law introduce the idea that partaking in the bystander law could perhaps make the situation worse than not intervening, which in some cases is in fact true, but how could making something as simple as a phone call to a first responder have a negative effect? It wouldn't, it would only be beneficial to the situation. This proves how even doing something as little as making a phone call could in fact save someone's life, instead of turning a shoulder and ignoring the situation altogether. Recent and past news events involving bystanders who witness but do not report or help victims in crisis have led concerned citizens in the state of California, and across the country, to lobby their
Catherine Genovese, a twenty-eight year-old who was on her way home in her build-up neighborhood in a late night shift as a bar manager. She was a manager in Queens, New York, but that night she was suddenly attacked by a man named Winston Moseley with a knife. Catherine was screaming and pleading for help that she got stabbed, but nobody comes to help her even though they heard her yelling for help. People not just didn't try to help, but didn´t even refuse to help her call the police. They didn't want to help or call the police because they didn't want to be involved in it. Murderer Moseley saw lights coming nearby and knew people were watching him , so he escaped and left Catherine there injured. Catherine was dragging herself towards a doorway bleeding, she could survive at this point, but later Moseley the attacker came back and started doing the same thing that he was doing to Catherine because he said in the court that nobody wants to help her or try to stop him for attacking. As badly
The Good Samaritan Law encourages others to partake in times of crisis without worrying about being indicted for it (Good Samaritans Law and Legal Definition). Fortunately, this law does not hold the individual liable if their life was at stake due to the intervention. Laws like these increase the liability of a bystander, while protecting the victim. An individual who has the ability to help without it posing a danger to his or her life has no excuse. While this law encourages help, another: the duty to rescue, obligates it.
We as humans do regretful things that go against our morals. In the paragraph above, the bystanders froze, unable to act in the situation. They may be “good” people, but they suffer from “the Genovese syndrome”, as explained by Michael Dorman in “The Killing of Kitty Genovese”. This is a term describing the way an individual goes against his or her own morals as a result of the presence of others or the diffusion of responsibility, otherwise known as the bystander effect. We all claim that if someone else was in danger we would do what we could to help
Humans all around the world are affected by the indifference of others. Globally and locally this can be shown through many large scale tragedies such as floods, wars and genocides. As people ignore these tragedies victims are left to fend for themselves, fighting to stay alive. These disasters may not be the fault of bystanders, but would the bystander want the same for themselves if they were in the same situation? It is not fair to watch someone not get the help they need, but when the same situation occurs for yourself ask why no one is helping. An example of this on a personal level could be letting someone drunk drive home and risk their lives instead of helping them find another way to get home. As said by Ellie Wiesel
After the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, bystander behaviour was first looked at by Latane and Darley in 1970. Kitty was repeatedly stabbed by a stalker on three separate attacks. During the first two attempts, voices and the sight of lights going on interrupted him and frightened him off but seeing as nobody was coming to her rescue, he went back the third time which consequently led to her death. During the police investigation it emerged that 38 of her neighbours had separately witnessed the attack and yet no-one had intervened or called the police.
It was chilly dawn on March 13th, 1964 that 28-year-old bar manager Catherine Kitty Genovese was walking home. While she was walking towards her house, a 29-year-old machine operator came out and stabbed her twice in the back. Catherine was frightened and desperately screamed for help. There were 38 citizens who watched the killer stabbing the woman, but no one called the police as they did not want to be involved in the situation. As a result, Catherine died while her urgent cries were unanswered by 38 witnesses (Martin Gansberg, 1964). After this tragedy, psychologists named the situation in which people do not offer any help to a victim when other individuals are around them as the Genovese syndrome (Meyers, 2010). The bystander effect, which is another name of the Genovese syndrome, emerged as a hot potato in several fields of study such as psychology, sociology, and ethics since it became much more rampant in modern society with the spread of the egoism. Some bystanders rationalize their decisions according to their comparison between the values of their own safety and others’. However, the bystander effect is an undesirable phenomenon as it degrades the moral level of overall society, destroys the system of social trust, and has negative influences on various social fields.
Kitty Genovese's public murder was a tragic consequence of the bystander effect, the sociological phenomenon in which the mere presence of others makes it less likely for people to help strangers in distress. This bystander apathy results from an ambiguous situation which people misconstrue as a non-emergency based on their own limited experience of emergencies and social cues observed from others. It can also result from a diffusion of responsibility that occurs in large groups as people have a tendency to rationalize their apathetic reaction. And finally, in some cases, the bystander effect occurs when people are afraid to help in front of an audience because it would put themselves at risk.
In the year of 2012; 10,189,902 criminal offenses took place in the USA and were made known to law enforcement (FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2012). Another 3-3.4 million crimes were estimated to have been committed and not reported (Bureau of Justice Statics 2012), making for a total of around 13,189,902 crimes committed in the year of 2012. This figure of unreported crime is referred to as the dark figure of crime and will never truly be known. This figure exists for a number of reasons including, fear of the victim to come forward, lack of resources available to the victim, lack of understanding by the victim regarding his or her options, and lastly the lack of help from outsiders. This lack of help can best be referred to as the bystander effect. The bystander effect is the social psychological phenomenon that takes place when individuals do not offer any type of assistance to a victim of a crime or medical emergency. (Henslin 2005). Note, this theory does not only apply to victims of crime, but also to victims of medical or physical emergencies. This theory was originally tested in 1986 by John M. Darley and Bibb Latene in reaction to the famous rape and murder case of Kitty Gonovese in 1964 and has since been further examined. The key components that contribute to the bystander effect include diffusion of responsibility, personal cost of getting involved, type of crime, relationships and exposure to, or knowledge of crime.
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
Her neighbors’ lack of empathy allowed for her murder. For the Kitty Genovese Article Reflection, we read two articles describing Kitty´s death, and answered questions regarding her neighbors. We were asked to provide reasons for why Kitty's neighbors did not act to prevent Kitty´s death, and for why they should have taken action. The purpose of the assignment was to gain understanding of the Bystander Effect, and how it can harm society. As a result of this assignment I concluded that the main causes of Kitty Genovese´s death are that the neighbors didn't want to get involved in the situation, go to court, or create a sense of fear for their families.
In a society where most people are physically unable to speak, read, or understand speech, people suddenly have almost no way to communicate with each other. This led to a collapse in society in which colossal changes were made to the fabric of society itself. At one point in the novel, Rye mentions that “People might very well stand by and watch if he tried to rape her. They would also stand and watch her shoot him.”(Butler, 95) In this world, it is perfectly normal to see a woman getting raped across the street, or a fight ending in death. Because there is no way to solve issues via communication, interactions can often become violent quickly. Because violence is so commonplace in this society, most people do their best to just avoid any sort of violence completely, even if that means them being a bystander while watching another person die. While this society does foster unethical behavior and selfishness, it’s truly the safest way for it to operate. Most people in this society probably wouldn’t be able to prevent a large man from robbing and killing an old woman, so they don’t do anything. If they did attempt to intervene, however, there is still an enormous risk that they would die or be seriously injured in the process. In this society, it’s not a matter of what is the “right” or
The bystander effect is a phenomenon in our society in which people will most likely not help a victim when there are other people around, making you a bystander. One of the most used examples was the case of Kitty Genovese. The New Yorker reported that she was stabbed to death in New York City, and 38 eyewitnesses did not try to help in any way. If people are informed about this social phenomenon then there is a better chance that more people will break this unwritten rule.
On March 13, 1964 a girl by the name of Catherine Susan Genovese “Kitty” was being stabbed to death outside her apartment. Many of her neighbors heard her cry for help but no one took action in view of the fact that they didn’t want to put themselves in danger. Detectives investigated the death of Genovese and discovered that no fewer than 38 of her neighbors had witnessed at least one of her killer’s three attacks but had neither come to her aid nor called the police. How could this happen? The people who were stunned by watching Mrs. Genovese being stabbed to death instead of taking action is the stimulus for research in the psychological phenomenon known as the “Bystander Effect.”
This principle states that the more individuals who are present to witness a critical situation or someone in need to help, the smaller the chances of offering help to that person; as it happened in Ms. Genovese’s case, who murdered after 38 witnesses failed to help her (Fischer et al. 2011). The concept of we-ness (a sense of belonging) with relation to the bystander effect claims that a bystander decision of assisting the victim is done after a series of analysing and understanding the emergency situation to ensure their ability to carry out the required behaviour (evaluation apprehension) and the action is accepted by the majority of people (pluralistic ignorance) (Levine et al. 2002). The bystander effect theory provides a clear explanation of how acting altruistically can be determined by personality, group cohesiveness and ambiguity of
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to become an animal for a day, or a week, or maybe even forever? I have come upon the conclusion that a cat is one of the best animals to become in the animal kingdom. The key points being a cat’s habitat, behaviour, and finally their anatomy.