How the bystander effect explains murder in front of eyewitnesses

On March 13, 1964, Catherine Susan (Kitty) Genovese was returning to her apartment on Austin Street in New York. It was half past three in the morning, and the street was deserted.

Kitty parked her car and was walking towards the entrance to the apartment building when she spotted an African-American man standing on the corner. It was Winston Mosley, the killer who traveled around the area for hours looking for a victim. He parked his car near the bus stop, and noticing a lonely woman, he got out and walked towards her.

Noticing Mosley, Genovese changed direction and tried to escape, but he caught up with her and stabbed her in the back several times. The noise of the brawl woke up one of Kitty's neighbors, Robert Moser. The man shouted from the window: “Leave the girl alone! Get out of here!” Kitty realized that she could be heard and screamed for help. Mosley was afraid of being seen and fled back to his car.

At that time, Genovese did not receive mortal wounds, and if Moser or one of the awakened neighbors called the police, the woman would be alive. But it turned out differently. Calling for help, Kitty turned into an alleyway, entered the building, and, exhausted from loss of blood, collapsed in the lobby.

Mosley didn't leave. For about 10 minutes he waited in his car to see if the police or an ambulance would arrive, but everything was quiet. Then the killer left the car again and went out in search of the victim. He found her bleeding in the lobby, stabbed her several more times, raped her and robbed her. Kitty was conscious and resisted.

The noise of the fight was heard by neighbors. But no one called the police and did not come to the girl's aid.

After Mosley left the crime scene, Genovese was discovered by her friend Sophie Farrah. She called an ambulance and held Kitty in her arms until the doctors arrived. The girl received 13 stab wounds and died before arriving at the hospital.

Two weeks later, The New York Times published an article about the murder with the headline: "37 people saw the murder and did not call the police, ”and everyone around started talking about moral decay and horrific indifference.

At the same time, two researchers, John Darley and Bob Lathan, were not so sure that society was sinking into a moral bottom. Scientists have claimed a phenomenon called the "bystander effect" that explains why perfectly normal, sympathetic and kind people may not come to the rescue when someone is in desperate need of it.

What is the bystander effect and why people don't help when needed

The bystander effect (the Genovese effect, bystander apathy) is a socio-psychological theory, according to which the desire of a person to help decreases when other passive observers are present in the situation.

There are several mechanisms responsible for this behavior.

Dissipation of responsibility

This is the tendency to share the responsibility for helping bystanders. If several people are watching the incident, the moral obligation falls on the whole group as a whole. And everyone thinks: “Why should I help, and not one of them?”

In addition, if help is not provided, the blame for this will also be distributed among everyone, which is not as scary as if only one was ashamed.

Early in their research, John Darley and Bob Lathan held interesting experimentconfirming the operation of this mechanism.

The students were asked to participate in the meeting, which took place remotely. The participant sat in a separate room and communicated with the others using a microphone and headphones.

In fact, the other people's voices were a tape recording, but the students did not know about it. Everyone spoke in turn, so that it seemed that several people were participating in the meeting.

In the first group, people were told that they were talking with another student one-on-one, in the second group that there were three more people in the meeting, and in the third group that five people were in touch.

At some point, one of the non-existent "students" allegedly had an epileptic seizure, and scientists detected the time it would take for a real participant to call for help from a researcher waiting in the hallway.

Among those who believed that they were communicating with another student one-on-one, absolutely everyone asked for help, and they did it quickly - in less than a minute from the onset of the attack.

If the participants believed that there were five other people in the group, the delay averaged about three minutes. Only 60% were within four minutes, and in real conditions it could cost someone their life.

Fear of negative evaluation

People are very worried about what impression they produce on others, and the fear of looking foolish acts as a deterrent to many actions.

Being in the circle of other witnesses, a person may be afraid of embarrassing himself. For example, if he tries to help someone who does not need it, or does something wrong, he will do more harm than help.

In one experiment participants were shown a fight between a man and a woman. In the first case, the woman screamed “I don’t even know you,” and in the second, “I don’t understand why I married you.” And in the first case, participants intervened three times more often than in the second.

If a quarrel occurs between familiar people, the intervention can cause aggression on the part of both: “Mind your own business!”

Also, the observer may fear negative consequences for himself personally. The horrifying case of two-year-old Chinese girl Wang Yu explain precisely this reason.

The baby slipped away from her mother and ran onto the road, where she was hit by a minivan. The dying girl was lying on the side of the road, and at least seven people passed by without giving her any help. Finally, an ambulance was called by a woman collecting garbage, but Wang Yu could not be saved.

At the same time, there are cases in China when those who helped the victims were accused of causing damage and were forced to pay hospital bills. Perhaps passers-by were simply afraid of incurring trouble.

pluralistic neglect

When faced with an ambiguous situation, people often resort to pluralistic ignorance - relying on the reactions of other people, and not on their own opinion.

In an emergency, a person may decide to wait and see how others act. And he does not even realize that at this moment everyone is guided by each other and does nothing for the same reason.

This phenomenon was excellently shown in another experiment by Darley and Latana. This time they planted students into the room, and then let smoke (actually steam) through a hole in the wall.

The accident was reported by 75% of those who were alone, in a group of three people there were only 38%. If there were two more dummy people with the participant who did not pay attention to the smoke, only 10% dared to talk about him.

In interviews after the experiment, the participants said that they were hesitant to show their anxiety to others, so they watched the reaction of the others.

Someone else's calmness made them think that the situation is not dangerous - since no one is doing anything, you can continue to do your own thing.

Is it true that in a dangerous situation you can only rely on yourself

It's not really all that bad, and the bystander effect won't necessarily lead to people passing by. dying person.

For example, in one large meta-analysis establishedthat in really dangerous situations, the bystander effect weakens - despite the presence of other observers, people are more willing to help.

Perhaps because the danger is more quickly recognized. But ambiguous situations can be ignored.

Exploring the bystander effect, John Darley and Bob Lathan put forward theory of the five steps. According to her, before intervening and helping, each person should take the following steps:

1. Notice an emergency. People can be busy with their own affairs and thoughts, so that a dangerous situation simply does not fall into the focus of their attention.
2. Determine if the case is an emergency and requires intervention. Not all situations are unambiguous, and a person may doubt that the other needs help.
3. Decide if there is personal responsibility. If a person is alone with the victim of the incident, he realizes that only he can help and will be to blame if he does not. When there are many people around, he can shift the responsibility to them, and the more witnesses, the stronger this effect.
4. Decide how to help. If a person takes responsibility, he needs to decide how exactly he will help and whether he can do anything at all in this situation. If a person has no idea what to do, then they are less likely to rush to the victim of the incident.
5. Provide selected assistance. At this stage, a person weighs the pros and cons of the action: whether he himself will suffer in the process, whether the action is worth the effort, and much more.

If a person stumbles at some step, for example, simply does not notice that something extraordinary is happening, or decides that he personally should not do anything, the victim will not wait for help.

That seems to have been the case in Kitty's case. And although the first article in The New York Times claimed that the murder took place on the street, in front of witnesses, in fact it happened in the lobby, and many neighbors could not see it.

Moreover, the weather was cold outside, and many of the windows were closed. Distant screams from the street accepted for a drunken brawl or disassembly of a couple, and therefore simply did not pay attention to them.

At the same time, the noise in the lobby was also heard, and one of the neighbors saw the murder - and yet did not contact the police. Instead, he called a girlfriend, who advised him not to get involved.

Thus, despite the fact that the tragic story of Genovese gave rise to the theory of the bystander effect, apparently, the woman was not helped at all because they hoped for others. Or not only that.

It cannot be said that society is rotten and that everyone cares only for themselves. But at the same time, the fear of looking stupid or relying on others can really stop people from doing the right thing.