On This Page:ToggleDefinitionsKitty GenoveseDecision Model of HelpingWhy It OccursBystander ExperimentsCritical Evaluation
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Take-home Messages
The bystander effect can cause someone to hesitate and refrain from taking action or offering help in a situation, assuming that others will step in or feeling less responsible when they see others present.
Thus, people tend to help more when alone than in a group.
Kitty Genovese
On the morning of March 13, 1964,Kitty Genovesereturned to her apartment complex, at 3 am, after finishing her shift at a local bar.
After parking her car in a lot adjacent to her apartment building, she began walking a short distance to the entrance, which was located at the back of the building.
As she walked, she noticed a figure at the far end of the lot. She shifted directions and headed towards a different street, but the man followed and seized her.
As she yelled, neighbors from the apartment building went to the window and watched as he stabbed her. A man from the apartment building yelled down, “Let that girl alone!” (New York Times, 1964).
Unfortunately, the assailant returned and stabbed Catherine Genovese for the final time. The first call to the police came in at 3:50 am, and the police arrived in two minutes.
When the neighbors were asked why they did not intervene or call the police earlier, some answers were “I didn”t want to get involved”; “Frankly, we were afraid”; “I was tired. I went back to bed.” (New York Times, 1964).
After this initial report, the case was launched to nationwide attention, with various leaders commenting on the apparent “moral decay” of the country.
In response to these claims, Darley and Latané set out to find an alternative explanation.
Decision Model of Helping
At each stage in the model, the answer ‘No’ results in no help being given, while the answer ‘yes’ leads the individual closer to offering help.
The five stages are:
Latane´ and Darley (1970) identified three different psychological processes that might interfere with the completion of this sequence.
Diffusion of Responsibility
Diffusion of responsibility occurs when a duty or task is shared between a group of people instead of only one person.
Whenever there is an emergency situation in which more than one person is present, there is a diffusion of responsibility. There are three ideas that categorize this phenomenon:
College students were ushered into a solitary room under the impression that a conversation centered around learning in a “high-stress, high urban environment” would ensue.
This discussion occurred with “other participants” that were in their own room as well (the other participants were just records playing). Each participant would speak one at a time into a microphone.
After a round of discussion, one of the participants would have a “seizure” in the middle of the discussion; the amount of time that it took the college student to obtain help from the research assistant that was outside of the room was measured. If the student did not get help after six minutes, the experiment was cut off.
Darley and Latané (1968) believed that the more “people” there were in the discussion, the longer it would take subjects to get help.
The results were in line with that hypothesis. The smaller the group, the more likely the “victim” was to receive timely help.
Still, those who did not get help showed signs of nervousness and concern for the victim. The researchers believed that the signs of nervousness highlight that the college student participants were most likely still deciding the best course of action; this contrasts with the leaders of the time who believed inaction was due to indifference.
Evaluation Apprehension
Pluralistic Ignorance
The third process is pluralistic ignorance, which results from the tendency to rely on the overt reactions of others when defining an ambiguous situation.
Pluralistic ignoranceoccurs when a person disagrees with a certain type of thinking but believes that everyone else adheres to it and, as a result, follows that line of thinking even though no one believes it.
Deborah A. Prentice cites an example of this. Despite being in a difficult class, students may not raise their hands in response to the lecturer asking for questions.
This is often due to the belief that everyone else understands the material, so for fear of looking inadequate, no one asks clarifying questions.
If the situation is clear (for the classroom example: someone stating they do not understand), pluralistic ignorance would not apply (since the person knows that someone else agrees with their thinking).
It is the ambiguity and uncertainty which leads to incorrect perceptions that categorize pluralistic ignorance.
Rendsvig (2014) proposes an eleven-step process to explain this phenomenon.
Thus, they all choose not to help due to the misperception of others’ reactions to the same situation.
Other Explanations
While these three are the most widely known explanations, there are other theories that could also play a role. One example is a confusion of responsibility.
Another example is priming. Priming occurs when a person is given cues that will influence future actions. For example, if a person is given a list of words that are associated with home decor and furniture and then is asked to give a five-letter word, answers like chair or table would be more likely than pasta.
In social situations, Garcia et al. found that simply thinking of being in a group could lead to lower rates of helping in emergency situations. This occurs because groups are often associated with “being lost in a crowd, being deindividuated, and having a lowered sense of personal accountability” (Garcia et al., 2002, p. 845).
Bystander Experiments
In one of the first experiments of this type, Latané & Darley (1968) asked participants to sit on their own in a room and complete a questionnaire on the pressures of urban life.
Smoke (actually steam) began pouring into the room through a small wall vent. Within two minutes, 50 percent had taken action, and 75 percent had acted within six minutes when the experiment ended.
In groups of three participants, 62 percent carried on working for the entire duration of the experiment.
In interviews afterward, participants reported feeling hesitant about showing anxiety, so they looked to others for signs of anxiety. But since everyone was trying to appear calm, these signs were not evident, and therefore they believed that they must have misinterpreted the situation and redefined it as ‘safe.’
This is a clear example of pluralistic ignorance, which can affect the answer at step 2 of the Latané and Darley decision model above.
Genuine ambiguity can also affect the decision-making process. Shotland and Straw (1976) conducted an interesting experiment that illustrated this.
They hypothesized that people would be less willing to intervene in a situation of domestic violence (where a relationship exists between the two people) than in a situation involving violence involving two strangers. Male participants were shown a staged fight between a man and a woman.
In one condition, the woman screamed, ‘I don’t even know you,’ while in another, she screamed, ‘I don’t even know why I married you.’
Three times as many men intervened in the first condition as in the second condition. Such findings again provide support for the decision model in terms of the decisions made at step 3 in the process.
People are less likely to intervene if they believe that the incident does not require their personal responsibility.
Critical Evaluation
Manning et al. (2007) did this through their article “The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping, The parable of the 38 witnesses”. By examining the court documents and legal proceedings from the case, the authors found three points that deviate from the traditional story told.
While it was originally claimed that thirty-eight people witnessed this crime, in actuality, only a few people physically saw Kitty Genovese and her attacker; the others just heard the screams from Kitty Genovese.
In addition, of those who could see, none actually witnessed the stabbing take place (although one of the people who testified did see a violent action on behalf of the attacker.)
This contrasts with the widely held notion that all 38 people witnessed the initial stabbing.
Lastly, the second stabbing that resulted in the death of Catherine Genovese occurred in a stairwell which was not in the view of most of the initial witnesses; this deviates from the original article that stated that the murder took place on Austin Street in New York City in full view of at least 38 people.
Limitations of the Decision-Helping Model
Although primarily developed to explain emergency situations, it has been applied to other situations, such as preventing someone from drinking and driving, to deciding to donate a kidney to a relative.
However, the decision model does not provide a complete picture. It fails to explain why ‘no’ decisions are made at each stage of the decision tree. This is particularly true after people have originally interpreted the event as an emergency.
The decision model doesn’t take into account emotional factors such as anxiety or fear, nor does it focus on why people do help; it mainly concentrates on why people don’t help.
Piliavin et al. (1969, 1981) put forward thecost–reward arousal modelas a major alternative to the decision model and involves evaluating the consequences of helping or not helping.
Whether one helps or not depends on the outcome of weighing up both the costs and rewards of helping. The costs of helping include effort, time, loss of resources, risk of harm, and negative emotional response.
The rewards of helping include fame, gratitude from the victim and relatives, and self-satisfaction derived from the act of helping. It is recognized that costs may be different for different people and may even differ from one occasion to another for the same person.
Accountability Cues
An online forum that was centered around aiding those with “severe emotional distress” (Bommel et al., 2012) was created.
The participants in the study responded to specific messages from visitors of the forum and then rated how visible they felt on the forum.
The researchers postulated that when there were no accountability cues, people would not give as much help and would not rate themselves as being very visible on the forum; when there are accountability cues (using a webcam and highlighting the name of the forum visitor), not only would more people help but they would also rate themselves as having a higher presence on the forum.
Neuroimaging Evidence
Researchers looked at the regions of the brain that were active when a participant witnessed emergencies. They noticed that less activity occurred in the regions that facilitate helping: the pre- and postcentralgyrusand the medial prefrontal cortex (Hortensius et al., 2018).
Thus, one’s initial biological response to an emergency situation is inaction due to personal fear. After that initial fear, sympathy arises, which prompts someone to go to the aid of the victim. These two systems work in opposition; whichever overrides the other determines the action that will be taken.
If there is more sympathy than personal distress, the participant will help. Thus, these researchers argue that the decision to help is not “reflective” but “reflexive” (Hortensius et al., 2018).
With this in mind, the researchers argue for a more personalized view that takes into account one’s personality and disposition to be more sympathetic rather than utilize a one-size-fits-all overgeneralization.
References
Darley, J. M., & Latané´, B. (1968).Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 377–383.
Garcia, Stephen M, Weaver, Kim, Moskowitz, Gordon B, & Darley, John M. (2002). Crowded Minds.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(4), 843-853.
Hortensius, Ruud, & De Gelder, Beatrice. (2018). From Empathy to Apathy: The Bystander Effect Revisited.Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(4), 249-256.
Latané´, B., & Darley, J. M. (1976).Help in a crisis: Bystander response to an emergency. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press.
Latané´, B., & Nida, S. (1981).Ten years of research on group size and helping.Psychological Bulletin, 89, 308 –324.
Manning, R., Levine, M., & Collins, A. (2007). The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping: The parable of the 38 witnesses.American Psychologist, 62, 555-562.
Prentice, D. (2007). Pluralistic ignorance. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.),Encyclopedia of social psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 674-674). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Shotland, R. L., & Straw, M. K. (1976). Bystander response to an assault: When a man attacks a woman.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34(5), 990.
Siegal, H. A. (1972). The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t He Help?1(3), 226-227.
Further informationLatané, B., & Nida, S. (1981). Ten years of research on group size and helping.Psychological Bulletin, 89, 308 –324.BBC Radio 4 Case Study: Kitty GenovesePiliavin Subway Study
Further information
Latané, B., & Nida, S. (1981). Ten years of research on group size and helping.Psychological Bulletin, 89, 308 –324.BBC Radio 4 Case Study: Kitty GenovesePiliavin Subway Study
Latané, B., & Nida, S. (1981). Ten years of research on group size and helping.Psychological Bulletin, 89, 308 –324.
BBC Radio 4 Case Study: Kitty Genovese
Piliavin Subway Study
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Udochi EmegharaResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityB.A., Neuroscience, Harvard UniversityUdochi Emeghara is a research assistant at the Harvard University Stress and Development Lab.
Udochi EmegharaResearch Assistant at Harvard UniversityB.A., Neuroscience, Harvard University
Udochi Emeghara
Research Assistant at Harvard University
B.A., Neuroscience, Harvard University
Udochi Emeghara is a research assistant at the Harvard University Stress and Development Lab.
