Kitty Genovese and the Bystander Effect:
different situations where an actor would pretend to collapse at the same place during the same time of day and the only variable would be his appearance. He documented the
time it took for people react, in the first instance the man reeked of alcohol and was holding a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag, no one came to his assistance. In the second trial the same actor was lying on the ground wearing an expensive business suit, he was almost immediately assisted. In the third trial it was a women wearing ordinary clothes, people passed he by without helping her but would keep looking at her worriedly not knowing what to do, until one man went to help her and only then did people gather around her to help her. In the fourth and final trial the actor returned wearing normal, casual clothes, but this time while lying on the ground he was crying out “Help me! Help me!” while pretending to be in pain, yet passers did not try to help him. This prompted psychologist to deduct that it is a person’s appearance that determines whether or not they would be sav
On March 14 1964, Catherine Susan “Kitty” Genovese was murdered near Kew Gardens in Queens, New York. Now the news of murder isn’t that uncommon, but what was shocking and terrifying about this murder was the fact that 38, respectable law-abiding citizens watched the murder take place, with no intervention and none of them called the police until 30 minutes after her death. This provoked investigations into the social psychological phenomenon, calling it ‘The Bystander Effect’ or the “Genovese Syndrome’. Scientist were worried that there was a loss of social responsibility, when Kitty was confronted on three separate attacks and stabbed 12 times altogether and yet none of the 38bystanders that witnessed her murder tried to help her, this lead psychologist and sociologists to worry that there was an evolving culture of violence and apathy.