ipl-logo

The Bystander Effect: The Brutal Murder Of Kitty Genovese

538 Words3 Pages

The Bystander Effect
Ha Luong
Pasadena City College

Bystander Effect
If you witnessed a situation where emergency was needed you would take some sort of action to help the person in need, right? ….aid a stranger in need….. Psychology suggests that whether or not someone takes action can depend on the number of people present, this is known as the bystander effect. The bystander effect, or bystander apathy, is defined as a situation in which the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation.
The brutal murder of Kitty Genovese is a famous case of the bystander effect. On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered near her home in Queens, New York. The attack lasted nearly an hour in which …show more content…

The experiment consisted of college students communicating with each other about personal problems associated with college life. This was done through microphones and speakers to maintain anonymity. During the experiment one of the subjects appeared to undergo a seizure. The dependent variable was the speed of which the subjects alerted the experimenter of the situation. The independent variable was the number of people the subjects thought to be in the discussion group. During the discussion only one subject could talk at a time. While one microphone was on, all others were off. In the discussion the future victim spoke of his difficulty adjusting to New York City and mentioned being prone to seizures, mainly during strenuous studying or taking exams. The other subjects proceeded to take turns and discuss their problems. The victim spoke again and made relatively calm comments that gradually increased louder and incoherent. “I'm... I'm having a fit... I... I think I'm... help me... I... I can't... Oh my God... err... if someone can just help me out here... I... I... can't breathe p-p-properly... I'm feeling... I'm going to d-d-die if…” The results of this experiment were as predicted, the presence of others reduced the individual’s feelings of personal responsibility and lowered the speed of reporting. The participants that

Show More
Related

  • The Murder Of Helen Jewett: An Analysis

    1496 Words  | 6 Pages

    In 1836, the gruesome death of a prostitute encaptivated the public eye and began a newspaper frenzy that centered on a morbid fixation of the life and death of Helen Jewett. Patricia Cline Cohen's The Murder of Helen Jewett pieces together the facts of Helen's life and death in an attempt to describe gender inequality in America by giving a meticulous account of life in the 1830s. (Insert small biography) Around three in the morning on Sunday, April 10, 1836 Rosina Townsend, the madam of the brothel, was spurred from her bed at the south end of Thomas St by a man knocking on the front door.

    Read More

  • Richard Waller's 'Journal Of Hate Studies'

    634 Words  | 3 Pages

    Taking the example of Reserve Police Battalion 101 as example, even those who refused to commit murder were still crucial enablers of the holocaust. Without them provided their indifference the game could not have continued. Not only did the bystanders allow for the game to continue smoothly they actually add to its efficiency, waller tells us as humans we look for social cues in one another to distinguish what is appropriate. This phenomenon is the root of the bystander effect. Bystanders provide these social cues and attribute to the concept of the path of least resistance mentioned by Johnson.

    Read More

  • The Noble Prize By Elie Wiesel Summary

    421 Words  | 2 Pages

    Some believe that bystanders are innocent, because they aren't the ones causing the pain. However they still witness what is going on around them, while watching others suffer. In “The Harvest Gypsies” John Steinbeck says, “The better dressed children shout and jeer, the teachers are quite often impatient”(John Sternbeck). This shows how just a little words and actions can affect people or add on to the problem. In “Killers of the Dream” Lillian Smith expresses, “Some learned to screen out all except the soft and the soothing; others denied even as they saw plainly and heard”(Lillian Smith).

    Read More

  • Summary Of 38 Who Saw Murder Didn T Call The Police

    634 Words  | 3 Pages

    The purpose of the news article "38 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police" by Martin Gansberg is to inform the reader of a murder that occurred in England because of the inaction taken by bystanders. This article also Informs about a now well-known phycological effect called the "Bystander Effect". First, the author uses the diction "39 RESPECTABLE, law-abiding citizens..." To emphasize that this event was not committed by people who were malicious as their actions may indicate. The author chose his words to give a grabbing sense of this can happen anywhere even to the reader.

    Read More

  • Bystander Behavior And Discourse Analysis

    834 Words  | 4 Pages

    Bystander behaviour can generally be described as the actions people take when they witness an emergency situation in a public place. There have been many studies on bystander behaviour, this essay will explore two approaches to explain this behaviour. It will look at the experimental method performed by Latané and Darley and at the discourse analysis done by Levine. First the essay will describe and outline the methods.after that it will examine the similarities as well as the contrast between those techniques. Latané and Darley did their research on bystander behaviour in the aftermath of the murder case of Catherine `Kitty´ Genovese,which happened in the Suburbs of New York in 1964.

    Read More

  • Bystander Effect In Night

    774 Words  | 4 Pages

    Every day many of us are faced with the question, “Should I step in and help?”. Some of us immediately think yes and jump in to help, while others believe it is better to keep walking. The bystander effect happens when a person does not stop and help because they think someone else will. In these situations, some people stand up and respond to the crisis, because they are not worried about what will happen to them, but what will happen to the person in crisis instead. In the novel Night and the poem “The Hangman”, the bystander effect took place because people were afraid to bring attention to themselves.

    Read More

  • The Story Of The Serial Killer Bertha Gifford

    673 Words  | 3 Pages

    The serial killer I researched was Bertha Gifford. She is most famous for her way of killing people. She didn’t use a common way, she would use rat poisoning (arsenic). She killed more then seventeen people, mostly children. Gifford was born in October 1872 in Grubville, Missouri.

    Read More

  • Bystander Behavior And Discourse Analysis

    1367 Words  | 6 Pages

    Both Latané and Darley 's use of the experimental method and Levine 's use of discourse analysis aim to gain insight as to why the bystander phenomenon occurs, and are interested in why humans seemingly go against their better nature and choose not to help others. (The Open University, 2015a) Latané and Darley 's(1970) cited in Byford, (2014, p.229) experiment consisted of a lab-controlled test and used their quantitative results in order to understand the bystander effect and concluded that people are significantly less likely to respond when in the “passive confederate condition” and most likely to respond when in the “alone condition.” Levine 's (1999) cited in Byford (2014, p.236) viewing of qualitative evidence meant that he was able to determine factors he felt led to the explanation of this effect, such as the examination of the Bulger case and others ' feeling as though they should not become involved in family matters. Both of these experiments were conducted in order to more clearly understand Bystander behaviour and the reasons

    Read More

  • The Bystander Effect Theory

    1263 Words  | 6 Pages

    The Bystander Effect: A Result of a Human Drive Repetitive cries and screams for help were heard in Kew Gardens, New York on the Friday night of March 13th in 1964. As the 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was approaching her doorstep, an attacker –Winston Moseley- came from behind and started to stab her repeatedly. Despite her loud calls for help, turning on the bedroom lights along the neighborhood is all what her calls were capable of. None of the thirty nearby neighbors wanted to go under the spotlight of answering the call of duty so it wasn’t before 20 minutes when the anonymous hero that lived next door decided to call the police. It was four years later when our victim’s story became the perfect example to explain the social psychological

    Read More

  • Murder On A Sunday Morning Analysis

    681 Words  | 3 Pages

    Murder on a Sunday Morning, is an Oscar award-winning documentary that tells of the conviction and trial of 15-year-old Brenton Butler for the death of Mary Ann Stephens in Jacksonville, Florida of May 2000. The film is a 111-minute movie directed by Jean-Xavier de Lastrade. The plot originates from the incident of Mary Ann Stephens being shot in the head by a black assailant; and then begins to unravel as Brenton Butler is arrested 90 minutes after the murder has occurred. Pat McGuinness, one of the main interviewees in the movie, takes up the case and defends Brenton Butler. The documentary presents the film from the trial, as well as interviews and investigations that Pat McGuinness and his partner Ann Finnel performed to gather facts for

    Read More

  • Research Paper On The Kitty Genovese Murder

    483 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Kitty Genovese Murder and the Social Psychology of Helping the Parable of the 38 witnesses argue that the 38 witnesses who were inactive during the murder of Genovese cannot be supported by the evidence that was taken up. This story is about a victim, Kitty Genovese who was killed in plain sight of 38 neighbors who did nothing to help. This crime has challenged the discipline of social psychology and created a theory known as the bystander effect. The bystander effect is an idea that people do not intervene because they are affected by the presence of others. In her case, she was murdered and assaulted sexually early morning on March 13, 1964, in the district of Queens, New York.

    Read More

  • Martin Gansberg's 37 Who Saw Murder Didn T Call Police

    902 Words  | 4 Pages

    Written by Martin Gansberg, the article “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call Police”, he communicates that bystander’s actions were significant because when someone is screaming the first instinct should be to call attention to it, the right thing to do is help, and it could have saved Genovese’s life. Bystander’s actions can go a long way, saving a life for example. When this story is told, it is often hard for many to believe, but it happened. Just with the simple action of picking up the phone, it could have stopped Kitty Genovese’s unjust

    Read More

  • Social Psychology In The Movie Crash

    761 Words  | 4 Pages

    The bystander effect is defined as the effect in which one person feels unobligated to help a situation because there are other people around. An example of this is the movie is when the two black guys in the stolen vehicle hit a man and because the other is present they feel it is best for their sake to stand by and run away from the man they just hit. This behavior shown towards the man who was hit is discourteous and occurred because the two men did not feel inclined to help the man they hit because the other was present. Defensive attribution is the tendency to blame the victim for the crime and is another aspect of social psychology found in the film Crash. One example of this in the film is the same example as stated before; when the two black men hit the pedestrian with a vehicle they stole.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of The Bystander Effect

    1212 Words  | 5 Pages

    The bystander effect states that during an occurrence or a crisis, the more observers there are, the less

    Read More

  • The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn T He Help?

    1050 Words  | 5 Pages

    They began their analysis of the “bystander effect” by recognizing several good reasons that one should not necessarily expect bystanders to offer help in an emergency. For example, most people are not prepared to deal with emergencies, which tend to happen quickly and without warning. In addition direct intervention may involve real physical danger, as in the Genovese incident. Finally becoming involved in such situations may lead to court or other legal consequences. Latane’ and Darley tested their ideas in a number of ingenious experiments, several of which are considered classic examples of social psychological research.

    Read More

More about The Bystander Effect: The Brutal Murder Of Kitty Genovese

Open Document