The Kitty Genovese Murder and Bystander Apathy (EN)

Kitty Genovese had driven home from her job working as a bar manager early in the morning of March 13, 1964. Arriving home at about 3:15 a.m., she was approached by a 29-year-old African-American business machine operator who ran after her and quickly overtook her, stabbing her twice in the back. Genovese screamed, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" He proceeded to further attack her, stabbing her several more times. Knife wounds in her hands suggested that she attempted to defend herself from him. While she lay dying, he raped her. He stole about $49 from her and left her in the hallway.

Her cry was heard by several neighbors but no one did anything to help during the 35 minutes of the attack.

Academic psychologists took a keen interest in the murder and launched a series of classic experiments investigating what it was later called the "bystander effect".

The bystander effect was first demonstrated in the laboratory by John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. These researchers launched a series of experiments investigating bystander intervention in emergencies.

In a typical experiment, the participant is either alone or among a group of other participants. An emergency situation is then staged (e.g. smoke pouring from a vent in the room, a person falling and becoming injured, a student having an epileptic seizure, etc.) The researchers then measure how long it takes the participants to act, and whether or not they intervene at all.

These experiments virtually always find that individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present often by a large margin.

Social psychologists arouse the following questions: when do we help others? why do we (or don't we) help others? who is more likely going to help others? who will we more likely help?

We need to define a couple of terms:

• Prosocial behavior is caring about the welfare and rights of others. This can be motivated by selfish interest or altruism.
• Altruism is a selfless concern for the welfare of others and it is the opposite of selfishness.

There is an ongoing debate whether true altruism exists.

Social psychologists (Bierhoff, Klein and Kramp, 1991) started a line of research to identify an "altruistic personality type". They compared two groups of people who have witnessed a car accident. One group was formed by the ones who helped the victim before the ambulance arrived, and the other group by the ones who did not give any assistance. Researchers found that the people who helped:

• scored very high in empathy
• had an internal locus of control (individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events result primarily from their own behavior and actions, while those with a low internal locus of control believe that powerful others, fate, or chance primarily determine events).

Once more a belief determines our actions. It did not matter whether the individuals had actual control over the events or not, what motivated their action was their belief that they were in control.

Other research shows that people tend to help more when in a good mood. On the contrary, people with tendency towards depression or anxiety are less likely inclined to help others. This has been demonstrated in several studies, especially with little children.

If you are still not horrified by bystander apathy, watch the following videos:

Liverpool Station Experiment

Hartford Incident

Hidden Camera Experiment

Hopefully this post will motivate you to take action the next time you see someone in need of help.

It seems that empathy is a key trait of people who actually do help, do you consider yourself empathic? Do you believe people can be truly altruistic?