Kitty Genovese Syndrome: Do People Use The Bystander Effect?

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

take action when they see a crime because it could save someone’s life.
Psychologists have been using the Genovese syndrome as a point of study and education ever since it happened in 1964.

One of the first experiments done with the bystander effect was a test to see if people would help a woman in distress. It was performed by John Darley and Bibi Latane where individuals are exposed to a woman in distress while alone, and in a group of people. The findings of this experiment were that 70% of people helped out the woman while alone, but when in a group, only 40% of people helped the woman. When the people were asked why they did not help, again, the answers were that they thought someone else would help. One of the main reasons behind the bystander effect is something called the diffusion of responsibility. Diffusion of responsibility means that someone will not react to help because they think that others will help first so they do not need to do anything, or they might feel that they are unqualified to help and think other people there are better to help. In any case, someone does not need any qualification to call the police or proper

authorities.
There have been many cases of the Genovese Syndrome since this first reported case in 1964. The Genoveses syndrome is simply defined as when more people that witness or are bystanders of a crime are least likely to help because they feel that someone else will help so they do not have to. The Genovese syndrome is also commonly referred to as the bystander effect, and is studied by many psychologists in many different crimes. One of the most prominent that comes to mind is the torture of Ilan Halimi, who, for three weeks was held captive and tortured in an apartment by some twenty men. Almost all of the people in the building knew what was going on and failed to call the police, and when the police were finally called, it was after Ilan’s death. There were a few people who lived in the building that admitted to knowing that the torture was happening and said they did not call the police because they did not want to get involved. Some of these people were charged with not reporting crimes. If the people that lived in this apartment building called the cops, then maybe Ilan is saved, and they are not charged with a crime.
The murder of Kitty Genovese was easily avoidable if the people who lived in her apartment building would have stepped up and taken action. Many of them fell victim to the bystander effect, commonly called Genovese Syndrome, which is the mindset that someone else will step in and help so they do not have to. Calling the police or proper authorities is the difference between a life or death situation, so if people do not step in, who will? The people in Kitty’s apartment building should have called the police when they witnessed the first attack because it could have saved her life.