What happened to Kitty Genovese?
- 13th March 1964: was stabbed, then raped and murdered by Winston Moseley in Kew Gardens NYC
- 23rd March: police commissioner claims that 38 witnesses had refused to intervene
- 27th March: New York Times prints front-page article (led to public outcry and debate on breakdown of moral/social values)
After the murder what was devised by Latane and Darley?
- 5-step cognitive model: in order to respond to an emergency we must: notice something is happening, interpret the event as an emergency, take responsibility for providing help, decide how to act, provide help
- set of experiments to test the model
What is the bystander hypothesis?
-inverse relationship between the number of bystanders and the likelihood of emergency helping (more bystanders, the less emergency)
What are the 2 processes?
- pluralistic ignorance: presence of others who remain inactive or seem unconcerned during an event can dissuade or discourage an individual from intervention (even though feeling concerned), norm of inactivity is established
- diffusion of responsibility: as the number of other people present in a given situation increases the responsibility a given individual feels for responding to that situation is correspondingly diminished, expect others to take on responsibility
What was the method of the white smoke experiment?
- male Columbia university undergraduates
- given cover story of the study looking at problems involved in life at an urban university
- asked to sit in a waiting room and fill in a survey, the room then begins to fill with an invisible white harmless smoke
- group size: participant alone/ participant with 2 other participants/confederates
What were the results of the white smoke experiment?
- people waited longer when with other people (bystander effect)
- percentage of interventions: alone (75%), 2 or more participants (10%), 2 confederates (10%)
- percentage within 2 minutes: alone (55%), 2 or more participants (12%), 2 confederates (10%)
What was the method of the seizure experiment?
- 72 undergraduate psychology students from NYU
- told it was a discussion about personal problems of students while at uni
- seated in small room (supposedly for anonymity), could hear the ‘other discussants’ through headphones and communicate via intercom in turns
- emergency event: 1 ‘discussant’ admits to being prone to seizures and expresses distress when it is his turn again
- group size: participant alone, 2 (with confederate), 5 confederates
What were the results of the seizure experiment?
- percentage of interventions: alone (85%), one more (62%), five more (31%)
- time in seconds: alone (52), one more (96), five more (166)
What was it found when the Kitty Genovese case was revisited?
- claim that 38 witnesses: court proceedings suggest fewer, most only heard a commotion but didn’t know what it was, only first attack could be witnessed before it moved to stairwell
- claim that nobody intervened: Moseley was driven away by shouting after first attack but didn’t fear anyone would actually directly intervene, residents did call police but were ignored
What is culturally-embedded theorising?
Cherry, 1995
- criticism: researchers have failed to translate this gender aspect of Kitty Genovese case into their experiments
- in the 60s domestic violence and violence of men against women weren’t discussed
- questioning over whether lab experiments can tell us about bystander behaviour in violent situations
What did the CCTV footage studies find?
- criticism: studies don’t examine violent situations as in the Kitty Genovese case
- Levine et al (2011): CCTV clips showed increase in bystanders correlates with conciliatory (to end disagreement) behaviour (3 is best, 1 escalates behaviour)
- Philpot et al (2020): 219 violent incidents, in 90% at least one bystander intervenes but not always successful (bias in recordings possibly as only more violent situations due to being police videos)
How does the social identity of bystanders effect results?
football shirt study
- conditions: injured wears football shirt of in-group club, or rival club or unbranded shirt
- more likely to help when they share a group identity with victim and when group norms align with helping
- found that: ingroup (90% helped), rival (32%), unbranded (30%)
- small sample though
What did the meta-analysis of bystander effect find?
Latane and Nida, 1981
-4 reasons why the studies generated much interest and research: mundane realism, experimental realism, theoretical framework, counterintuitive and powerful phenomenon
What did the meta-analysis of bystander effect find?
Fischer et al, 2011
- first quantitative meta-analysis on this topic
- 7,700 participants from 105 studies
- overall effect size of -0.35
- effect was stronger when: non-dangerous, perpetrator not present, non-physical costs
- bystanders provide support to intervening individuals: all male bystanders, naive rather than passive confederates, bystanders weren’t strangers
How has the bystander effect been applied beyond ‘emergency’ help?
- charitable giving (if more personalised campaigns they’ll donate more)
- climate emergency
- witnesses to a crime
- ‘whistleblowers’
What is the effect on promoting helping?
- many interventions include component on how to encourage bystanders to get involved
- though group is often conceptualised as an inhibitor rather than resource
- interventions that draw on shared identity and shared norms appear to be successful
