People throughout the nation were shocked by the murder of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese in New York City. The facts of the case seemed to tear at our very social fabric as a nation. Kitty had screamed repeatedly for help as her killer had stalked her for more than half an hour and stabbed her in three separate attacks. Thirty-eight neighbors are known to have heard the commotion. Their voices and bedroom lights interrupted the assault twice. Yet nobody came to Kitty’s aid. No one even called the police. How could this happen? Some witnesses admitted that they had not wanted to get involved. One said that he was tired. Some simply said, "I don’t know."
Are these the reasons that no one came to the aid
of Kitty Genovese? As a nation, are we a callous bunch
who would rather watch than help when other people are
in need? News commentators spoke about the alienation
and dehumanization of city dwellers, particularly New
Yorkers. But John Darley and Bibb Latané, two
social psychologists, were not convinced that these
were the most important reasons. The two met at a party
shortly after the crime and mused about it for hours.
They then had a joint flash of inspiration: Perhaps
nobody helped precisely because they knew so many other
people were watching. Late that evening they began to
design an experiment to test what would become known
as the bystander effect. Like so many others of its
kind, this classic experiment relied on deceiving the
subjects as to the true purpose of the study.
Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility
By JOHN M. DARLEY BIBB LATANé
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Ss overheard an epileptic seizure. They believed either that they alone heard the emergency, or that 1 or 4 unseen others were also present. As predicted the presence of other bystanders reduced the individual’s feelings of personal responsibility and lowered his speed of reporting (p,.01). In groups of size 3, males reported no faster than females, and females reported no slower when the 1 other bystander was a male rather than a female. In general, personality and background measures were not predictive of helping. Bystander inaction in real-life emergencies is often explained by "apathy," "alienation," and "anomie." This experiment suggests that the explanation may lie more in the bystander’s response to other observers than in his indifference to the victim.
Several years ago, a young woman was stabbed to death in the middle of a street in a residential section of New York City. Although such murders are not entirely routine, the incident received little public attention until several weeks later when the New York Times disclosed another side to the case: at least 38 witnesses had observed the attack–and none had even attempted to intervene. Although the attacker took more than half an hour to kill Kitty Genovese, not one of the 38 people who watched from the safety of their own apartments came out to assist her. Not one even lifted the telephone to call the police (Rosenthal, 1964).
Preachers, professors, and news commentators sought the reasons for such apparently conscienceless and inhumane lack of intervention. Their conclusions ranged from "moral decay," to "dehumanization produced by the urban environment," to "alienation," "anomie," and "existential despair." An analysis of the situation, however, suggests that factors other than apathy and indifference were involved.
A person witnessing an emergency situation, particularly such a frightening and dangerous one as a stabbing, is in conflict. There are obvious humanitarian norms about helping the victim, but there are also rational and irrational fears about what might happen to a person who does intervene (Milgram & Hollander, 1964). "I didn’t want to get involved," is a familiar comment, and behind it lies fears of physical harm, public embarrassment, involvement with police procedures, lost work days and jobs, and other unknown dangers.
In certain circumstances, the norms favoring intervention may be weakened, leading bystanders to resolve the conflict in the direction of nonintervention. One of these circumstances may be the presence of other onlookers. For example, in the case above, each observer, by seeing lights and figures in other apartment house windows, knew that others were also watching. However, there was no way to tell how the other observers were reacting. These two facts provide several reasons why any individual may have delayed or failed to help. The responsibility for helping was diffused among the observers; there was also diffusion of any potential blame for not taking action; and finally, it was possible that somebody, unperceived, had already initiated helping action.
When only one bystander is present in an emergency, if help is to come, it must come from him. Although he may choose to ignore it (out of concern for his personal safety, or desires "not to get involved"), any pressure to intervene focuses uniquely on him. When there are several observers present, however, the pressures to intervene do not focus on any one of the observers; instead the responsibility for intervention is shared among all the onlookers and is not unique to any one. As a result, no one helps.