Kitty Genovese Murder Case: The Latane Case

In response to the infamous Kitty Genovese murder case, Latane` and Darley conducted an experiment to see how people react in emergency situations alone versus in a group. Surprisingly, they found their results to be the exact opposite than what they hypothesized: people are more likely to react to an emergency situation faster in a group than alone (Latane` and Darley., 1968, p. 216). This case was responsible for creating many social phenomenons such as the bystander effect, diffusion of responsibility, and pluralistic ignorance that can now help explain why people respond the way they do in certain situations. The findings in this experiment not only showed how being in a group can change one’s morals, but also cause one to hide their emotions.
This experiment is important because the results showed how people are more likely rely on others to make a decision in a discomforting situation resulting in no one making a decision. In the Genovese case many people saw her attacker, but did not call the police claiming “I thought someone else had call

In the experiment, many participants who were paired with two confederates that showed no can change to avoid being different. Many participants had “the desire to hide fear” even though they had a belief that something was wrong. Latane` and Darley concluded “seeing others remain passive makes you remain passive” (p. 220). When alone, more than 55% of the participants reported smoke under 2 minutes versus 12% when in a group (Latane` and Darley., 1968, p. 219). Also, two confederates rejected the normal behavior to react when seeing smoke in a room causing most of the participants to go along and reject their belief to react when seeing smoke. This example showed how a person’s reaction to an emergency situation can change when they are in a group to conform with the