APPLIED TOPIC READINGS
Chapter 1
Helping in emergencies: Revisiting Latané & Darley’s bystander studies
THE KITTY GENOVESE MURDER & THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF HELPING
(Manning, Levine, Collings; 2007)
Kitty Genovese: murdered in front of 38 witnesses who allegedly stood and did nothing.
This event paved the way for a great phenomenon in Psychology:
The Bystander Effect = the finding that individuals are more likely to help when alone than when in
the company of others
This led to idea that bystanders don’t intervene due to diffusion of responsibility & their perceptions
of and reactions to potential of intervention situations can be (-) affected by the presence (imagined
or real) of others.
Story of the 38 witnesses ≠ supported by evidence.
o became modern parable – opposite of the story of the Good Samaritan.
o power of the story comes from moral lesson about dangers of the group and how presence
of others can undermine bonds of neighbourly concern.
Arguments of the reading:
o The repeated telling of the parable of the 38 witnesses: limited imaginative space of helping
research in social psychology.
o Much interest in the functions of the story as a parable.
o These functions = dependent on function & content of the story as told/relayed in social
psych texts.
o Story = considerable importance and requires correction/at least qualification.
The Parable of the 38 Witnesses:
The story prompted Latané & Darley to begin work on the bystander effect.
By focusing on real-life behaviour in emergencies (but varying nr of people believed to be present)
Latané and Darley were able to argue that presence of others inhibits helping
Some crimes become ‘signal crimes’ = incidents constructed as warning signals about risk distribution
Even though the facts of the event were wrong, the research remained valid.
The Murder of Kitty Genovese:
Murdered & assaulted early the morning of 13 March 1964, Kew Gardens (Queens, New York)
Story of the 38 witnesses was developed by two journalists - Martin Gansberg and A.M. Rosenthal.
Literature gives impression that she was killed on the street where murder could be seen by others.
Most texts suggest that 38 witnesses watched from their windows as the murder unfolded
All claimed that nobody intervened/called police until after Kitty was dead.
Challenging the Story of the 38 witnesses
Analysis of the court transcripts and & other legal documents suggest a different picture of events on
the night of Kitty’s murder:
o Not all witnesses = eye witnesses, some only heard the attack
o Witnesses since claimed that police were called directly after 1st attack
,APPLIED TOPIC READINGS
o None of the eye witnesses could have watched Kitty for full 30 minutes because Kitty &
murderer were visible to the witnesses for only a few moments
o There were 2 separate attacks, not 3
o 2nd attack occurred inside the building where only small nr of witnesses could have seen
o Kitty was still alive when the police arrived at the scene
At trial 5 witnesses were called (Mozer, Picq, Frost, Koshin, Farrar) – 3 were eyewitnesses.
Evidence suggests: rather fewer than 38 witnesses, full list of the 38 was never made available.
3 eye witness reports:
o Frost: saw them standing close together, not fighting & went back to bed.
o Picq: saw Kitty laying down and a man was bending over her and beating her
o Mozer: looked out of the window and across the street and saw this girl at the book store,
kneeling down, and this fellow was over her in a kneeling position
None of the witnesses reported seeing the stabbing
Once Mozer shouted to Mosley (attacker), Mosley ran off and the witnesses report seeing Kitty walk
around the corner of the building on Austin Street.
2nd attack took place inside (stairwell of Austin Street) - none of the witnesses could see.
Intervention:
o Clearly enough intervention to cause Mosley to abandon the 1 st attack.
o A 15-year old’s father made a phone call to the police station after 1 st attack.
o One resident of Austin Street immediately called police and rushed to Kitty’s side.
Functions of the Parable
Cautionary tale about dangers to neighbourliness that result from conditions of modern life.
Other aspects of the event could have also been explored besides the failure of the group e.g. gender
relations and violence.
Consequence = D & L used the story to link together figure of the group with figure of the crowd.
Before, danger of anonymity in a crowd could only be explained i.t.o violence.
From Groups as active threat to group as passive threat
From history already, groups have been seen to be dangerous entities
In historic tradition:
o Crowds = dangerous threat to social stability, irrational(contagious), suggestible & credulous,
lose sense of individuality (deindividuation theory)
o Behaviour of crowds reveal primitive nature stripped of the constraints usually provided by
other psychological qualities
The features found their way into empirical & laboratory-based theories of group behaviour.
E.g. classic deindividuation theory incorporates several of the assumptions about the dangers of
violence and instability that might result from immersion in the group.
In recent years, there have been critiques of this classic approach to deindividuation phenomena:
o Critiques focused on question of rationality: specifically, whether violence that emerges
under deindividuation conditions can be explained not i.t.o. pathology, but i.t.o. qualities of
social context/social identities that are prominent at the time.
o None of these critiques draw attention to: in all of the accounts of the (-) impacts of the
collective, the dangers are always manifested in potential for action. Ability to act was at root
of power of crowds & key source of their perceived social threat. Associated notions of
energy & excitation = also frequently invoked in explaining crowd behaviour.
Allport (1924) developed notion that crowds provided great deal of stimulation – this stimulation
acted as energy source that could result in an overexcitation that removed the protection of learned
reflexes to set free unconstrained instinctual behaviours.
,APPLIED TOPIC READINGS
In bystander tradition, failure to act doesn’t come from an overloaded info processing system, but
from psychological inhibition that results from presence of others.
Conclusion
Through the parable of the 38 witnesses, urban crowds/groups became more dangerous than ever
before – they threatened social disintegration whether they were active/inactive.
By challenging story of the 38 witnesses – uncover alternative formulations of potential of the group
in context of helping behaviour.
Argue that stories like that of Kitty & the 38 witnesses play key role in populating psychological
imagination in a way that precludes thinking about (+) contributions that groups can make to
intervention.
GROUP INHIBITION OF BYSTANDER INTERVENTION IN EMERGENCIES
(Latané & Darley; 1968)
What factors will determine whether a bystander will intervene?
o Found that people witnessing an event with other people will decrease likelihood that
individual will intervene in an emergency.
o Diffusion of responsibility seems the most likely explanation for this result.
Interacting groups should be better at coping with emergencies than single individuals – suspected
that the opposite is true.
Before any bystander will help, they need to define an ambiguous event as emergency & decide that
intervention is the proper course of action.
Individual bystander – influenced by decisions he perceives other bystanders make.
If bystanders don’t perceive event as serious: influence individual bystander to intervene/not.
Other people’s definitions that they hold – discovered by discussing the situation/inferred from their
facial expression, behaviour.
Line of thought will be tested by presenting emergency situation alone/in presence of 2 passive
others (confederates of the experimenter who have been instructed to notice the emergency but
remain indifferent to it)
Expectation: passive behaviour will signal indiv that other bystander don’t see situation as dangerous.
Predict that individual faced with passive reactions of other people will be influenced by them & thus
be likely to take action if he were alone.
This says nothing about the initial question about freely interacting groups.
Another factor: each member of group may watch others, also aware that others are watching them
Americans believe that males need to appear poised and collected in times of stress.
Constraints involved: being in public might inhibit action by individuals in a group.
o (embarrassment/avoid ridicule)
With social pressure they might be pressurised to have even more powerful effects.
People will only intervene when they see others intervene.
2nd prediction: when exposing groups of naive subjects to emergency compared to performance of
individuals, constraints on behaviour in public coupled with social influence process – lessen
likelihood that members of group will act to cope with emergency.
Crowds can also force inaction (intervention) on its members.
Method:
, APPLIED TOPIC READINGS
Subject, seated in a small waiting room, faced an ambiguous but potentially dangerous situation as a
stream of smoke began to puff into the room, through a wall vent.
Response to this situation was observed through one-way glass.
DV: length of time subject remained in room before leaving to report the smoke.
Recruitment of subjects:
Male Columbia students living in campus residences.
Discuss some problems involved in life at an urban university.
Graduate & professional students & undergraduates.
Contacted by telephone
Most willing subjects showed up to experiment.
Subjects were directed by signs or by the secretary to a waiting room.
▫ asked to fill out a preliminary questionnaire.
Experimental Manipulation:
Some subjects filled out the questionnaire and were exposed to a critical situation when alone.
Some were part of a 3-group situation (1 subject & 2 confederates - naïve subjects).
2 confederates attempted to avoid the conversation as much as possible.
No action followed after seeing the smoke and carried on filling out the questionnaire.
3 naive subjects were tested together.
o did not know each other.
In other 2 groups: nodded to acquaintanceship.
Subjects arrived at different times, had individual questionnaires and were therefore not introduced
to each other – and no attempt at conversation.
Critical situation
Once completing 2 pages of questionnaire, smoke introduced through small vent in the wall.
▫ injected in irregular puffs
Vision obscured by smoke at end of experiment.
Behaviour & conversation was observed and coded from a behind one-way window.
When smoke was reported, they were told that it would be taken care of.
If subject did not report the smoke, experiment was terminated after 6 minutes
Results
Alone condition:
Subject when tested alone behaved very reasonably.
Shortly after smoke appeared, glanced up from questionnaire, notice smoke, shows slight distinct
startle reaction, undergoes brief period of indecision, glances back up to see smoke.
Some subjects would walk to the vent & investigate
The alone subject would eventually get out of the room and report the event very calmly – reported
the smoke within 2 minutes of first noticing
¾ of 24 subjects reported the smoke before experiment was terminated.
Two passive confederates condition:
2 passive confederates were dramatically different.
10 – ran in this condition, 1 – reported the smoke.
9 waited in the waiting room, working on their questionnaire and waving the fumes away.
o coughed, rubbed their eyes, but did not report the smoke.
Chapter 1
Helping in emergencies: Revisiting Latané & Darley’s bystander studies
THE KITTY GENOVESE MURDER & THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF HELPING
(Manning, Levine, Collings; 2007)
Kitty Genovese: murdered in front of 38 witnesses who allegedly stood and did nothing.
This event paved the way for a great phenomenon in Psychology:
The Bystander Effect = the finding that individuals are more likely to help when alone than when in
the company of others
This led to idea that bystanders don’t intervene due to diffusion of responsibility & their perceptions
of and reactions to potential of intervention situations can be (-) affected by the presence (imagined
or real) of others.
Story of the 38 witnesses ≠ supported by evidence.
o became modern parable – opposite of the story of the Good Samaritan.
o power of the story comes from moral lesson about dangers of the group and how presence
of others can undermine bonds of neighbourly concern.
Arguments of the reading:
o The repeated telling of the parable of the 38 witnesses: limited imaginative space of helping
research in social psychology.
o Much interest in the functions of the story as a parable.
o These functions = dependent on function & content of the story as told/relayed in social
psych texts.
o Story = considerable importance and requires correction/at least qualification.
The Parable of the 38 Witnesses:
The story prompted Latané & Darley to begin work on the bystander effect.
By focusing on real-life behaviour in emergencies (but varying nr of people believed to be present)
Latané and Darley were able to argue that presence of others inhibits helping
Some crimes become ‘signal crimes’ = incidents constructed as warning signals about risk distribution
Even though the facts of the event were wrong, the research remained valid.
The Murder of Kitty Genovese:
Murdered & assaulted early the morning of 13 March 1964, Kew Gardens (Queens, New York)
Story of the 38 witnesses was developed by two journalists - Martin Gansberg and A.M. Rosenthal.
Literature gives impression that she was killed on the street where murder could be seen by others.
Most texts suggest that 38 witnesses watched from their windows as the murder unfolded
All claimed that nobody intervened/called police until after Kitty was dead.
Challenging the Story of the 38 witnesses
Analysis of the court transcripts and & other legal documents suggest a different picture of events on
the night of Kitty’s murder:
o Not all witnesses = eye witnesses, some only heard the attack
o Witnesses since claimed that police were called directly after 1st attack
,APPLIED TOPIC READINGS
o None of the eye witnesses could have watched Kitty for full 30 minutes because Kitty &
murderer were visible to the witnesses for only a few moments
o There were 2 separate attacks, not 3
o 2nd attack occurred inside the building where only small nr of witnesses could have seen
o Kitty was still alive when the police arrived at the scene
At trial 5 witnesses were called (Mozer, Picq, Frost, Koshin, Farrar) – 3 were eyewitnesses.
Evidence suggests: rather fewer than 38 witnesses, full list of the 38 was never made available.
3 eye witness reports:
o Frost: saw them standing close together, not fighting & went back to bed.
o Picq: saw Kitty laying down and a man was bending over her and beating her
o Mozer: looked out of the window and across the street and saw this girl at the book store,
kneeling down, and this fellow was over her in a kneeling position
None of the witnesses reported seeing the stabbing
Once Mozer shouted to Mosley (attacker), Mosley ran off and the witnesses report seeing Kitty walk
around the corner of the building on Austin Street.
2nd attack took place inside (stairwell of Austin Street) - none of the witnesses could see.
Intervention:
o Clearly enough intervention to cause Mosley to abandon the 1 st attack.
o A 15-year old’s father made a phone call to the police station after 1 st attack.
o One resident of Austin Street immediately called police and rushed to Kitty’s side.
Functions of the Parable
Cautionary tale about dangers to neighbourliness that result from conditions of modern life.
Other aspects of the event could have also been explored besides the failure of the group e.g. gender
relations and violence.
Consequence = D & L used the story to link together figure of the group with figure of the crowd.
Before, danger of anonymity in a crowd could only be explained i.t.o violence.
From Groups as active threat to group as passive threat
From history already, groups have been seen to be dangerous entities
In historic tradition:
o Crowds = dangerous threat to social stability, irrational(contagious), suggestible & credulous,
lose sense of individuality (deindividuation theory)
o Behaviour of crowds reveal primitive nature stripped of the constraints usually provided by
other psychological qualities
The features found their way into empirical & laboratory-based theories of group behaviour.
E.g. classic deindividuation theory incorporates several of the assumptions about the dangers of
violence and instability that might result from immersion in the group.
In recent years, there have been critiques of this classic approach to deindividuation phenomena:
o Critiques focused on question of rationality: specifically, whether violence that emerges
under deindividuation conditions can be explained not i.t.o. pathology, but i.t.o. qualities of
social context/social identities that are prominent at the time.
o None of these critiques draw attention to: in all of the accounts of the (-) impacts of the
collective, the dangers are always manifested in potential for action. Ability to act was at root
of power of crowds & key source of their perceived social threat. Associated notions of
energy & excitation = also frequently invoked in explaining crowd behaviour.
Allport (1924) developed notion that crowds provided great deal of stimulation – this stimulation
acted as energy source that could result in an overexcitation that removed the protection of learned
reflexes to set free unconstrained instinctual behaviours.
,APPLIED TOPIC READINGS
In bystander tradition, failure to act doesn’t come from an overloaded info processing system, but
from psychological inhibition that results from presence of others.
Conclusion
Through the parable of the 38 witnesses, urban crowds/groups became more dangerous than ever
before – they threatened social disintegration whether they were active/inactive.
By challenging story of the 38 witnesses – uncover alternative formulations of potential of the group
in context of helping behaviour.
Argue that stories like that of Kitty & the 38 witnesses play key role in populating psychological
imagination in a way that precludes thinking about (+) contributions that groups can make to
intervention.
GROUP INHIBITION OF BYSTANDER INTERVENTION IN EMERGENCIES
(Latané & Darley; 1968)
What factors will determine whether a bystander will intervene?
o Found that people witnessing an event with other people will decrease likelihood that
individual will intervene in an emergency.
o Diffusion of responsibility seems the most likely explanation for this result.
Interacting groups should be better at coping with emergencies than single individuals – suspected
that the opposite is true.
Before any bystander will help, they need to define an ambiguous event as emergency & decide that
intervention is the proper course of action.
Individual bystander – influenced by decisions he perceives other bystanders make.
If bystanders don’t perceive event as serious: influence individual bystander to intervene/not.
Other people’s definitions that they hold – discovered by discussing the situation/inferred from their
facial expression, behaviour.
Line of thought will be tested by presenting emergency situation alone/in presence of 2 passive
others (confederates of the experimenter who have been instructed to notice the emergency but
remain indifferent to it)
Expectation: passive behaviour will signal indiv that other bystander don’t see situation as dangerous.
Predict that individual faced with passive reactions of other people will be influenced by them & thus
be likely to take action if he were alone.
This says nothing about the initial question about freely interacting groups.
Another factor: each member of group may watch others, also aware that others are watching them
Americans believe that males need to appear poised and collected in times of stress.
Constraints involved: being in public might inhibit action by individuals in a group.
o (embarrassment/avoid ridicule)
With social pressure they might be pressurised to have even more powerful effects.
People will only intervene when they see others intervene.
2nd prediction: when exposing groups of naive subjects to emergency compared to performance of
individuals, constraints on behaviour in public coupled with social influence process – lessen
likelihood that members of group will act to cope with emergency.
Crowds can also force inaction (intervention) on its members.
Method:
, APPLIED TOPIC READINGS
Subject, seated in a small waiting room, faced an ambiguous but potentially dangerous situation as a
stream of smoke began to puff into the room, through a wall vent.
Response to this situation was observed through one-way glass.
DV: length of time subject remained in room before leaving to report the smoke.
Recruitment of subjects:
Male Columbia students living in campus residences.
Discuss some problems involved in life at an urban university.
Graduate & professional students & undergraduates.
Contacted by telephone
Most willing subjects showed up to experiment.
Subjects were directed by signs or by the secretary to a waiting room.
▫ asked to fill out a preliminary questionnaire.
Experimental Manipulation:
Some subjects filled out the questionnaire and were exposed to a critical situation when alone.
Some were part of a 3-group situation (1 subject & 2 confederates - naïve subjects).
2 confederates attempted to avoid the conversation as much as possible.
No action followed after seeing the smoke and carried on filling out the questionnaire.
3 naive subjects were tested together.
o did not know each other.
In other 2 groups: nodded to acquaintanceship.
Subjects arrived at different times, had individual questionnaires and were therefore not introduced
to each other – and no attempt at conversation.
Critical situation
Once completing 2 pages of questionnaire, smoke introduced through small vent in the wall.
▫ injected in irregular puffs
Vision obscured by smoke at end of experiment.
Behaviour & conversation was observed and coded from a behind one-way window.
When smoke was reported, they were told that it would be taken care of.
If subject did not report the smoke, experiment was terminated after 6 minutes
Results
Alone condition:
Subject when tested alone behaved very reasonably.
Shortly after smoke appeared, glanced up from questionnaire, notice smoke, shows slight distinct
startle reaction, undergoes brief period of indecision, glances back up to see smoke.
Some subjects would walk to the vent & investigate
The alone subject would eventually get out of the room and report the event very calmly – reported
the smoke within 2 minutes of first noticing
¾ of 24 subjects reported the smoke before experiment was terminated.
Two passive confederates condition:
2 passive confederates were dramatically different.
10 – ran in this condition, 1 – reported the smoke.
9 waited in the waiting room, working on their questionnaire and waving the fumes away.
o coughed, rubbed their eyes, but did not report the smoke.
