Bystander Effect Essay

The Bystander Effect

Everybody wants to be a hero and to change the world. To make it a better place and make a difference. So why then in the face of danger do we back down? Why do we just stand by as cruel things happen to good people. Science has coined this term as the bystander effect. The bystander effect is defined as, a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. You can see this effect in full in the movie, The Hunger Games, as people just stand by and let the killing of innocent children happen year after year. Now this might seem like a crazy idea because in you mind if someone really needed help you would always help. This is not always the case though. In the book, "No One Helped": Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, the author, Marcia Gallo, highlights the events that happened that lead to the understanding of the event known as the Bystander Effect. It was because of this event, that the term bystander effect was first used and brought to light not only to the scientific community but also to the public. March 27, 1964 Kitty Genovese ...show more content...

And more importantly, why does this happen. Well there are a number of different reasons that this happens.in the book, Bystander Apathy and the Territorial Imperative, A.R Gillis and John Hagan highlight the science behind the Bystander Effect. They highlight the finding that one of the reasons that people fail to get involved is the idea of disorganization; the idea that in high stimuli situations, such as city life, one's stress is increased and the need to blend in and not cause attention increases. Another reason that people fail to get involved is because they do not know the other people involved. It has been studied that if a friend was in trouble a person would feel socially accountable to help rather than with a

Get more content

The Bystander Effect

The Bystander effect is a controversial theory given to social phenomenon where the more potential helpers there are, the less likely any individual is to help. A traditional explanation for this Bystander Effect is that responsibility diffuses across the multiple bystanders, diluting the responsibility of each. (Kyle et al.) The Bystander effect, also known as the Genovese Syndrome, was created after the infamous murder of "Kitty" Catherine Genovese in 1964, on the streets of New York in front of thirty–seven witnesses. After studying the Genovese syndrome and doing research on how this phenomenon occurs today, it is clear The Bystander effect is not theory, but actually fact.

It wasn't until Martin Gansberg wrote...show more content...

An eyewitness told police that he contemplated calling the police and instead called a friend to get advice on what he should do. The man crossed the apartment building and had an elderly women make the call. The man sheepishly told the police " I didn't want to get involved" (Gansberg, 1964). Six days later, police arrested Winston Moseley, a 29–year–old machine operator. In addition to being convicted of Murder of Catherine Genovese, Moseley also admitted to killing two other women in the past year during his investigation. Law enforcement was unsure to hold the eyewitnesses responsible for failure to report the crime that resulted in the murder. After investigations with witnesses most admitted they were too afraid to call, or gave other arbitrary reasons for not reporting the crime. Detectives interviewed a couple that admitted to hearing the screams and even witnessed the crimes. When asked why they didn't contact the police the wife replied, "I don't know" (Gansberg, 1964). Another witness told the police he overheard the screams and he didn't report it because he was tired and went back to bed. Detectives were able to capture the suspect rather quickly, because the residents of the neighborhood were capable of providing detailed information leading to the arrest of Moseley. It was this event, that created The Genovese Syndrome, otherwise known as The bystander effect; The bystander effect refers to the phenomenon that an individual 's likelihood of helping Get

Bystander Essay Imagine you get attacked while in your car, in the middle of heavy traffic, on your way to work. The attacker had a knife and baseball bat. They break open your window with the baseball bat, drop it, and start to stab at you. You get cut, and start to scream for help. But none of the hundreds of others come to you aid. They quickly disperse, causing an accident, and leave you on your own to die. You get cut at the heart, and thrown out of the car, left to die. "Why didn't they help him?" many other people would think. The answer to that is something called the bystander effect. The Bystander Effect is when someone who is capable of helping another person in danger, does nothing but idly stand by, watching the event happen....show more content...

"A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him... But a certain Samaritan... came upon him; and when he saw him... bandaged up his wounds, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him". (Source B) This is an example of someone who went against the bystander effect. This Samaritan saw someone that was in dire need of help, and instead of carrying on with their life as if they never saw him, the Samaritan did something about it, fixing up this poor man, and taking him to an inn for shelter. Sometimes people break the Bystander Effect, and are able to assist those in need. In the story On the Sidewalk Bleeding, there are 2 rival gangs, the Royals, and the Guardians. In the story, a Royal named Andy gets stabbed by a group of Guardians, fatally, and is left to die. There were 2 groups of people who could have saved Andy, but did not. A drunk man, and a girl and boy, who were dating. The drunk man did not know that Andy was stabbed and dying, as he thought that Andy was drunk, and the drunk man was obviously to drunk to realize what happened. The boy and girl, however, considered helping him, but "We help him, and the Guardians'll be down on our necks". (Source A) They didn't help him simply out of fear for another gang. If they did decide to help him, if they broke through the Bystander Effect, Andy would have survived in the story. When people break through this effect, lives can be

The Bystander Effect Psy 110– Asynchronous

The Bystander Effect If you saw someone being attacked on the street, would you help? Many of us would quickly say yes we would help because to state the opposite would say that we are evil human beings. Much research has been done on why people choose to help and why others choose not to. The bystander effect states that the more bystanders present, the less likely it is for someone to help. Sometimes a bystander will assume that because no one else seems concerned, they shouldn't be (Senghas, 2007). Much of the research that has been done supports this definition of the bystander effect. There have also been recent situations where this...show more content... Researchers also found that students were more likely to intervene when they are the only person around (Flanagan and Stout, 2009). This is not hard to believe because children learn behaviors from their parents and other adults. Adults do only feel obligated to react when there are not many people around; children observe this behavior and replicate it in their daily lives. In this same journal researchers found that 41% of students say that they would step in and help a fellow classmate in need. However, in reality only about 1 in 4 actually do intervene (Flanagan and Stout, 2009). There is obviously some discretion between intention and behavior. Researchers are not sure what makes children decide to help or not to help. These young students are demonstrating the bystander effect. This journal also talks about bullying and why students will not tell teachers when a student is being bullied. Not much study has been done on this, but researches believe that it has much to do with the bystander effect. Another example of the bystander effect in everyday life happened this year in New York City. A homeless man rushed to assist a woman who had been attacked. He was representing the good side of the bystander effect. He saw someone in need and immediately reacted to help that person. In his attempt to save this woman from this beating, he was stabbed. As he was lying on the street dying in a pool of blood, people walked by and did nothing to

Examples Of The Bystander Effect

Chapter 2 Theoretical approaches

The bystander effect is the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation (Bystander Effect, n.d.). For example, a person had witnessed a car incident happened and the victims were seeking for help. If the person was the only one who were encountered in the situation, he would react fast and give help to the victim. Furthermore, the numbers of the bystander will affect a person if they wanted to involve in an emergency situation. For instance, if 2 or more people had witnessed the same car incident as mentioned before, they were slower and less likely to give help to the victim.

The bystander effect was first introduced by John M. Darley and Bibb LatanГ© in 1968. They...show more content...

A 2–year–old girl called Wang Yue, had died in an car accident and the car accident had been ignored by 18 bystanders. None of them had given help to the child. Finally, a rubbish guy called for police. The 2–year–old died days later due to systemic organ failure. (Chinese toddler left for dead in hit–and–run crash dies, 2011) At the market where Little Wang Yue lived, there are four open–fronted stores have a clear line of sight to notice the incident. The four owners of the stores that might have chance to notice the incident said that they did not see the girl until they heard the screams of her mother. Tan Jing Zhao, 27, who runs a shop selling bolt cutters and drills said that although he heard Wang Yue's weak cries, he said he did not realize what was happening due to the rain. He said that it was very dark that day and usually children there cried when there were rain and thunder. He said that he had no idea. (Moore.M, 2011) This has proven that the bystander had failed to notice the

In the Bystander Effect video, there were people present at the incident but none of the bystanders helped the participants in the study. "Bystander effect the tendency for any given bystander to be less likely to give aid if other bystanders are present" (Myers,2014, p. 495). The study was done in Liverpool Street Station in London a busy side of town. The first participant was named Peter he laid on the side walk for more than twenty minutes asking from help from bystanders and no one would help him. Peter did not fit in with the environment in the Liverpool Street Station. Peter was not dressed up he had on blue jeans with a black jacket with tennis shoes. The second participant named Ruth was dressed in blue skirt with a black jacket and she was laying unresponsive on the steps of the Liverpool Street...show more content... People wanted to help Ruth but they were to afraid. Ruth laid there more than four minutes without help because every bystander was trying to see who would help Ruth first. Once a bystander decides to walk up and ask Ruth was everything ok she started to draw other bystanders attention after the man approached her. Peter returned for a second time dressed business casual with shirt and tie which blended in with the Liverpool Street Station environment. As bystander passed it only took 6 seconds for someone to approach Peter and give assistance. Peter blended in well with the environment by the way he dressed in accordance with the way all other bystanders was dressed. Therefore, they shy away from given him the assistance he needed. This is what "psychologists call the diffusion of responsibility when it is much easier to let someone else get involved first" (Coolpsychologist., Get more content

Research Summary

My article was Darley's and Latane's, "Bystander Intervention in Emergencies: Diffusion of Responsibility." They conducted this study to figure out how would people react in various group sizes in an emergency situation. As well as which one those individuals in different size groups would go and call for help. The concept of this was taken from the famous case of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death multiple times and finally was killed in her own neighborhood and no one intervened. This is known to be the bystander effect. However, in this research experiment, people were either in groups of 2, 3, or 6 and then they would overhear the person having an epileptic seizure. It was predicted that due to the presence of...show more content...

The person who was having the seizure specifically requested help and showed that he thought he was dying. There were a few differences on this base research experiment. To begin with, there were various group sizes in various instances. For instance, there were either groups of two, three, and six people. There was only one actual participant per group, while the rest were part of the experiment. This was the independent variable. It was intended to test if the number of individuals would diffuse the duty given in a crisis circumstance. In addition to that, various types of individuals took part in this study. Different genders and authority figure was presented. This person was a premedical student working at the emergency ward at Bellevue Hospital. Initially, it was meant to find any distinction in different genders responding. Also, it was intended to figure out if the presence of an authority figure would affect the participant's response if they were to assume that the medical student would take charge in a crisis situation. Furthermore, the dependent variable was the speed of the individuals reporting the emergency of someone having a seizure to the experimenter. The experiment was terminated if individuals did not seek assistance for the seizure victim within six minutes. Thus, this research was conducted in a correlational fashion. Then the true essence of the experiment was revealed. Then

According to Aronson, Wilson, and Akert (2013) prosocial behavior is defined as an act performed for the benefit of another person. Altruism is referred to as the want to help another individual even if it means no benefits, or possibly a cost, for the helper (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2013). One particular factor, the bystander effect, has a profound impact on whether or not people help others. The bystander effect states that as the number of people who witness an emergency increases, the likelihood that any of those people will help decreases (Aronson et al., 2013). Processes associated with the bystander effect such as pluralistic ignorance, diffusion of responsibility, and victim effect all impact the likelihood of prosocial...show more content...

Also, individuals think that since there are plenty of people around, someone else is bound to help. Lastly, whether or not people help is impacted by the victim effect. This often refers to whether or not the victim is identifiable or simply a statistic. According to Kogut and Ritov (2005), the emotional reaction to victims appears to be a significant source of the effect. Victims who are singular and describable, such as a young girl getting hit by a car, are likely to elicit more distress in on–lookers than a larger group of individuals, listed as a statistic that gives no real, identifiable qualities of the victims (Kogut & Ritov, 2005). This concept is representative of the evolutionary and empathy–altruism approaches in prosocial behavior. People are more likely to respond prosocially to those who are most like them, such as a relative or someone of like characteristics (Aronson et al., 2013). If a victim is described in detail, it is more likely that people will identify, emphathize, and react prosocially. Social and cultural pressures, as well as beliefs about the self will influence helping behaviors. In an emergency, both informational and normative social influences are impacting whether an individual helps another. People look for queues from others in order to determine if the current situation requires action to be taken. Also, people will do things simply to be accepted by the group (Aronson et al., 2013). In any Get

Bystander effect, (Darley & Latane, 1970) refers to decrease in helping response when there are bystanders around relative to no bystanders. Referring to previous study stating that there are some cases of which group size may promote helping instead of hindering it (Fischer et al., 2011). Researchers then speculate the possibility of positive influences from bystanders by taking public self–awareness into consideration. Researchers proposed that high public self–awareness would reverse the bystander effect in this study with 2 independent variables which are bystander and presence on the forum. They are defined as number of bystanders (absent vs present) and salience of name (salient vs non–salient) respectively. 86 students are randomly...show more content...

Besides, carrying out a manipulation check right after this experiment is beneficial to this study as well. Having a manipulation check by rating statements makes sure that controlling types of nametags increases public self–awareness subsequently and makes the study more convincing. Nevertheless, the effect of confounding variables such as individual differences in willingness to help that may affect the result is minimized through random assignment.

Limitations

There are also limitations in this study. First, the outcome of reddening participants' name, which exerts a sense of existence and concern of their own public self–awareness, seems ambiguous. Online forums nowadays use different ways such as displaying role titles, awarding special icons to differentiate administrators, active and normal users. Changing color of the displayed name is another common way. Participants may be misled as if they have special roles in the forum when their names are reddened. Once a person has a role in a social categories, one's relationship with others may change and possibly enhance or degrade the helping effect (Levine, et al., 2005). As a result, it is debated that participants' interpretation of "red name" determines whether public self–awareness is the designated independent variable or not and hence alters the result significantly. To refine the experiment, extra questions can be added to the manipulation check to assure that the result is not affected by the Get more content

"The Bystander effect" is the psychological occurrence that is related to the social intervention among people. It is filled with anecdotes of people of who stood back when help is needed, preferring to wait for someone else to act. According to author, the probability of accepting help decreases with an increment in the quantity of spectators. There are different causes of the bystander effect and these causes only depends on the perception of the individual and the way people take up the situation. Most common causes are diffusion of responsibility, symbolic interactionism and fear of becoming target or getting indulged in criminal case. Firstly, bystander effect is seen in case of emergency surrounded by number of people. This create the situation of confusion that is diffusion of responsibility such that we may expect that others will help, so we don't have to. They may even be better qualified to help, we may assume, so we ought to give them a chance to mediate....show more content... Bystanders around the situation changes the meaning of the situation for instance, if we found someone lying on the street we might think that person is drunk or some other person will think that person might be tired or may be that person is being hit by some health problem or accident . Further, this perception also affects the reaction of the person to particular situation that is how to take up the present scenario. Particularly when we're in a vague circumstance, we look to others to make sense of how we ought to comprehend the circumstance and what we ought to do. On the off chance that in a crisis circumstance we see that no one else is helping, we may imagine that we shouldn't either. Possibly it is not by any means an emergency, or perhaps there is nothing that should be

Get more content

What are causes behind the "bystander effect"?

Bystander or Bodyguard: An Examination of Who Helps and Who Does Not A bystander, according to Michael Webster's New World College Dictionary, is an individual who is present in a given situation, but is not involved (Agnes, 2001). The word bystander does not always have a negative connotation, but in the case of bullying or an emergency situation, it does. In either scenario, a bystander is not helping in a time of crisis and this can have many negative outcomes. Many factors play a role in remaining passive and not engaging in prosocial behavior (Evans & Smokowski, 2015). One of these factors is the well–known phenomenon known as the bystander effect. According to this theory, bystanders do not take action if there are other bystanders...show more content...

The sad truth about bullying, is that although people express opinions of distaste for bullying, most people do not engage in helping behavior and intercede in the situation where this is occurring (Cowie, 2014). A study conducted by Atlas and Pepler (1998) showed how accurate this fact is. 60 scenarios of bullying involving elementary school children were videotaped. The results found that in only 10% of the scenarios a bystander engaged in prosocial behavior and helped the victim, which is a shockingly low percentage. Many other cases have revealed similar results regarding defenders in bullying situations (Evans & Smokowski, 2015).

Bullying, although accomplished by only one individual, is considered to be a social situation, that is greatly influenced by others present. The presence of individuals, especially peers, increases the likelihood of bullying reoccurring. Passivity in bystanders actually contributes to the bullying behavior because it is reinforcing and reassuring to the bully to see no one acting to stop them, thereby condoning the behavior. This reduces any feelings of discomfort that the bully would otherwise face if his behavior was not being condoned (Howard, et al., 2014).

The Bystander Effect The bystander effect has been studied in depth, beginning in the early 1960s. In the social psychology field, this phenomenon has been especially prevalent. The murder of Catherine Susan (Kitty) Genovese, was the

Get more content

Hi Jenni!

I believe that I have seen the possibility for the bystander effect when someone is injured. I play ultimate frisbee, and the closer knit the group is the more unlikely for the bystander effect to be observed when someone is hurt (closeness can be seen when people are talking to each other /participating in rituals).

Usually, people know how to help; and sometimes there are individuals who understand how to quickly help hurt shoulders or sprains. Some folks can even make recommendations on how to approach the next week with an injury. I may have observed the bystander effect more in other countries that my family visited when I was younger. Since I have never lived for long periods of time in cities I feel that I have less experience with the bystander effect. However, Milgram's view that we may be managing the information that could flood our minds makes sense....show more content...

Milgram's experiment and the bystander effect both seem to relate to things that collapse more slowly. For example, the church I grew up in slowly went away, and there were many folks who were hurt deeply when the church that had helped bring meaning to their lives failed. It is almost as if a group of people who desire friendship instead become deeply committed to an ideology, and that ideology eventually leads to people feeling depressed and unsure of what to

Get more content

The Bystander Effect Everyone has experienced witnessing another person in danger or has been in a harmful circumstance with a witness present. Thousands of people each day are faced with this dilemma, whether it be small scale, such as bullying, or large scale, such as murder. Psychology Dictionary defines the bystander effect as "a tendency for people not to get involved or not to offer help in a social situation". Examples include school children standing around timidly as they watch their fellow classmate receive taunts from the school bully, or neighbors keeping quiet as they witness a young girl being brutally murdered. As citizens and as human beings, bystanders have the moral obligation to intervene in a crisis. Although people have...show more content...

According to research by Emory University, "The likelihood of helping increases as the perceived cost to ourВselves declines" ("Bystander Intervention"), meaning that the more harm an individual assumes they would be in, the less likely that individual is to intervene in the situation. Although there are some cases where bystanders may have been harmed when trying to help, intervention doesn't necessarily mean risk. There are many ways one could get involved without risking their owns lives, whether they are trained in combat or an average joe. Dylan Rawls, an average civilian, saved a life without any knowledge of a police officer or any training in defense (Dvorak). This shows that not only authorities, but also everyday civilians are able to protect their neighbors. It is important for the bystander to realize exactly what risk they are taking. It is the individual's choice whether to do the right thing and risk their safety for the safety of others, or to stand back and watch, most likely facing regret afterwards. Emory University also stated that, "Being an active bystander does not mean that you should risk your personal safety, or that you need to become a vigilante" ("Bystander Intervention"). Intervening could mean something as simple and harmless as calling 911. Bystander intervention does not always risk personal safety and is therefore a risk worth

Get more content

The Bystander Effect

From my understanding, ethics are the moral ideas that influence a person's or group's behavior. Like the world around us, ethics have evolved over time. In earlier years, researchers started becoming smarter because they began to conduct experiments and various tests by using human and animal subjects. This helps us understand why we behave the way we do. There is however, a major difference in the way we conduct experiments today compared to back then. The bystander effect, is an example of an experiment that is now considered unethical. It is considered unethical because of today's standards, which were put in place by the American Psychological Association (APA). During the bystander effect, they would give a participant a survey and

Get more content

Over the course of centuries, in political, economic, and/or social affairs there tends to be a common onlooker, witnessing scenarios that deal with both, the victims and the perpetrators. Bystanders, especially during the Second World War, were likely to follow patterns of self–awareness, social cues, blocking mechanisms, and diffuse responsibility, due to fear of punishment from executors. Thebystander effect, rationalizes why individuals are less likely to help in an emergency situation if others are present. Although, the bystander effect limits to the study of behavior in emergency conditions, the study helps one understand and relate to the patterns of participation that bystanders follow. It has four principal components: self–awareness,...show more content...

He or she does not want to appear imprudent or inappropriate in front of others. Self–awareness allows one to understand other people, how they perceive one, ones attitude, and ones responses to them in the moment. Individuals actively look to one another for cues about how to behave in a certain situation. Social cues are gestures that are given, usually consciously during a social interaction that communicates a person's thoughts, or expected actions at certain intervals of a group's activity.

An interesting point to take into consideration is that when multiple bystanders take action, the emergency often can become worse. The action–or perceived or suspected action–of one bystander effectively blocks others from taking action. For example, in most face–to–face situations, such as the classroom, blocking plays a protruding role. In refined conversation, only one person can speak at once. If one person has the floor, all others are effectively blocked from actively participating. In a situation where only a small percentage of the bystanders can take action, responsibility is diffused. Each individual feels he or she has only limited responsibility for the negative consequences of inaction. "The world is too dangerous to live in – not because of the

Get more content

I think the word bystander effect means when individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation.the studies show the majority of students are likely to be a bystander when it is related to sexual assault because they might see it as being acceptable or they're too scared to help or don't want to involve themselves in the situation. Reasons because they don't want to talk to the police or have to have a witness. People film rape and put it in social media because they want everybody to know what's going. Some People would film it because they have phones or they would do it for views.

Part 2

In the video Jackson Katz talk about domestic violence, gender violence, relationship abuse, sexual abuse, sexsual harassment and sexual abuse Get

The bystander effect Essay

In the early morning hours of March 13, 1964, twenty–eight year old barmaid Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was murdered and raped on the street in Kew Gardens, New York. The incident did not initially receive much attention until Martin Gansberg's infamous article, "Thirty–Eight Who Saw Murder, Didn't Call the Police", was published in the New York Times two weeks later. In reality, only twelve people witnessed the event yet each did nothing to significantly help Genovese until it was too late. The Genovese murder has become the definitive example of the " bystander effect", the social phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to help someone in distress if there are other people present. The bystander effect occurs wherever there is...show more content...

People have a tendency, known as social proof, to believe that others' interpretation of the ambiguous situation is more accurate than their own. Hence, a lack of response by others leads them to conclude that the situation is not an emergency and that response is not warranted. Finally, empirical evidence has shown that the bystander effect is negated when the situation is clearly recognized as an emergency. In a 1976 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Lance Shotland and Margaret Straw illustrated that when people witnessed a fight between a man and a woman that they believed to be strangers to each other, they intervened 65 percent of the time. Thus, people often do not respond appropriately to an emergency situation because the situation is unclear to them and as a result, they have misinterpreted it as a non–emergency based on their own past experience or social cues taken from others.

The bystander effect also arises from a diffusion of responsibility as each bystander can better rationalize his or her lack of action. In some cases, people assume that in a large group, there will be someone else that is more qualified to help and therefore, each person feels less obligated to act. For example, a doctor is far more qualified to provide medical assistance to a victim and likewise, a police officer or stronger–bodied man can better subdue a perpetrator. If the crowd of bystanders is large, Get more content

Theories Of The Bystander Effect

Bystanderism or the Bystander Effect can be defined as the phenomenon that an individual is less likely to help in an emergency situation when passive bystanders are present (Darley and LatanГ©, 1968). Latane and Darley (1970) published a book entitled, Theory of the Unresponsive Bystander. According to the theory, the presence of other people or just the perception that other people are witnessing the event will decrease the likelihood that an individual will intervene in an emergency due to psychological processes like: (1) diffusion of responsibility, wherein the responsibility is diffused when more bystanders are present and this reduces the psychological costs of not intervening, (2) pluralistic ignorance or informational social influence, which means that if the situation is ambiguous people will look to other people around to see what they do, and (3) evaluation apprehension, wherein individual bystanders are aware that other people are present and may be afraid of being evaluated negatively if they react. Moreover,...show more content... Most emergencies are, or at least begin as, ambiguous situations. In these situations, individuals tend to look for cues in their environment that may help them to disambiguate what is going on. In other words, each member of a group of naГЇve bystanders is misled by the apparent inaction of the others into adopting a non–emergency interpretation of the observed scene and ultimately to stay passive. Once all bystanders look to their peers for cues, resulting in non–action, the group runs into the danger of unwillingly defining non–acting as a social norm. Cialdini (2001) calls the kind of social cues that are used to examine whether or not there is need for action 'social proof'. Accordingly, we 'view other behaviour as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it' (Cialdini, Get

more content

The Bystander Effect is a controversial theory given to social phenomenon where the more potential bystanders there are, the less likely any individual is to help in emergency situations. A traditional explanation for the cause of the Bystander Effect is that responsibility diffuses across the multiple bystanders, diluting the responsibility of each. (Kyle et al.) The Bystander effect, also known as the Genovese Syndrome, was named after the infamous murder of "Kitty" Catherine Genovese in 1964, on the streets of New York in front of thirty–seven witnesses. After studying the Genovese syndrome and doing research on how this phenomenon occurs even today, it is clear The Bystander Effect is not just a theory, but actually fact.

It wasn't...show more content...

An eyewitness told detectives that he contemplated calling the police and instead, called a friend to get advice on what he should do. After confiding in his friend, the man decided to get help and had an elderly women make the call. The man sheepishly told the police " I didn't want to get involved." (Gansberg) Six days later, police arrested Winston Moseley, a 29–year–old machine operator for the murder of Kitty Genovese. Law enforcement was unsure if they should hold the eyewitnesses responsible for failure to report the crime that resulted in the murder. After investigations, most witnesses admitted they were too afraid to call, or gave other arbitrary reasons for not reporting the crime. Detectives interviewed a couple that admitted to hearing the screams and even witnessed the crimes. When asked why they didn't contact the police the wife replied, "I don't know" (Gansberg). Another witness told the police he didn't report the crime because he was too tired and went back to bed. Detectives were able to capture the suspect rather quickly because the residents of the neighborhood were capable of providing detailed information leading to the arrest of Moseley. It was this event that lead to the discovery of The Genovese Syndrome, otherwise known as The Bystander Effect. The Bystander Effect refers to the phenomenon that an individual 's likelihood of helping decreases when passive bystanders are present in a critical situation. (Darley and Latane 250)

Get more content

Introduction Today a lot of individuals are praised for their bravery and their heroism. A lot of these people risk their lives to save or help others when those are in need. These people can range from firefighters who risked their lives to save innocent people from the 9/11 attack to an ordinary person who helps an old lady to carry her groceries to her house. Even though there are a number of instances when people help others who are in need, such as mentioned above, there are also a number of instances when those same people avoid helping and getting involved, such as; ignoring an old lady who slipped and fell down in the middle of the road, avoiding helping an old man to pick up his change that fell out of his pocket,...show more content...

While the fight developed more and more students gathered in a circle while cheering it on. In a span of five minutes approximately fifty students were watching the fight, until they heard a police siren, which caused them to disappear within seconds. The second event took place near my apartment building. As two teenagers ages 15–17 were walking home from school, when approached by another teen – "stranger" – approximately the same age as them. As the time passed, it was very evident that some sort of conflict escalated between the "stranger" and one of the two "school" teens. That conflict eventually led into a fight between the two of them while the "school" teen's friend tried to break it up. Eventually he was able to break up the fight leaving both students with bloody noses and ragged clothes. From the two events mentioned above it's very evident that they are more or less similar, yet at the same time there are a lot of major differences. The major similarity in those two events is that they both possess some sort of conflict between two teenagers that eventually leads into a fight. The major difference between the two events is that in the first one, approximately fifty more people have witnessed the fight, as compared to the second one when only one person was present. The other major difference between the two events is that no person was willing to interfere with

Get more content