The Case of Kitty Genovese and the Diffusion of Responsibility

When there are too many people watching, no one helps those in need. Why?

In the year 1964, the case of Kitty Genovese case swept through the New York newspapers and made the front page of the Times. The 29-year-old girl came home from work at 3 a.m. and parked her car near the building where she lived. There, she was attacked by a mentally disturbed man who stabbed her in the back several times. The girl screamed and one of the neighbors heard the scream. The neighbor just tried to chase the killer away behind his window. "Leave the girl alone!", but he did not come to her aid or call the police. The killer temporarily left, as Kitty crawled, bleeding, toward her building.

The killer returned minutes later when the girl was already at the door of the building. He stabbed her repeatedly as she screamed. While she was dying, he raped her and robbed her of $49. The whole event lasted approximately 30 minutes. No neighbors intervened and only one called the police to report that a woman had been beaten. According to the New York Times, as many as 40 neighbors heard the screams. According to official records, there were 12. In Kitty Genovese's case it is irrelevant whether there were 40 people or 12. What is relevant is: why don't we help when we know a person needs help?

Kitty Genovese and the diffusion of responsibility

Kitty Genovese's case is extreme; however, we live surrounded by situations in which we ignore the help a person needs. We have become accustomed to walking among the homeless, ignoring calls for help, hearing cries that go unanswered, avoiding cries that might make us suspect domestic violence or violence against children. We know that every day there are not only murders but also abuse. On many occasions, very close to us.

What is it that leads us to evade our responsibility? What psychological mechanisms are involved in the helping process?

Research

The death of Kitty Genovese served to make social psychologists ask themselves these questions and begin to investigate. From these studies emerged the Diffusion of Responsibility Theory (Darley and Latané, 1968), which explained what really happens in these situations, from the phase in which we realize or not that there is a person in need of help, to the decisions we make to help or not.

The hypothesis of these authors was that the number of people involved influences the decision making to help. That is, the more people we believe may be witnessing the situation, the less responsible we feel for helping. Perhaps this is why we do not usually provide help in the street, where there is a great traffic of people, even if someone needs help, just as we ignore very extreme situations of poverty. This mode of apathy ends up transforming into a kind of passive aggressiveness, since by not helping when it is necessary and responsible, we actually collaborate in a certain way with that crime or social injustice. The researchers conducted a multitude of experiments and were able to demonstrate that their hypothesis was true. Now, are there more factors involved besides the number of people?

First of all, are we aware that a helping situation exists? Our personal beliefs are the first factor in whether we help or not. When we consider the person in need of help as solely responsible, we tend not to help. This is where the similarity factor comes into play: whether this person is similar to us or not. This is the reason why certain social classes do not lend themselves to help others, as they consider them to be far removed from their status (which is a form of social prejudice, a small form of madness far removed from human empathy and sensitivity).

Helping or not helping depends on several factors

If we are able to detect a situation where a person needs help and we consider that we should help him/her, then cost-benefit mechanisms come into play. Can I really help this person? What will I gain from it? What can I lose? Will I be harmed by trying to help? Again, this decision making is influenced by our current overly pragmatic and increasingly individualistic and insensitive culture..

Finally, when we know we can help and are willing to do so, we ask ourselves: should it be me? Isn't there someone else? In this phase, fear of others' responses plays a special role. We think that others may judge us for wanting to help someone, or consider us similar to the person in need of help (the belief that "only a drunk would approach another drunk").

The main reasons for shirking the responsibility to provide help.

Beyond Darley and Latané's Diffusion of Responsibility Theory, today we know that our modern culture plays a key role in repressing our pro-social behavior, a way of being totally natural in human beings, since we are sensitive, social and empathic beings by nature (we are all born with those skills and we develop them or not depending on our culture). These are the blocks to help:

1. Am I really responsible for what is happening and should I help? (belief derived from modern classism, a social prejudice).

2. Am I qualified to do it? (belief derived from our fear)

3. Will it be bad for me to help? (a belief derived from our fear and also from the influence of modern classism).

4. What will others say about me? (fear, because of how our self-concept will be affected, a form of selfishness).

All these blocks can be left behind if we consider that we are beings capable of helping, responsible for doing so as social and human beings, and above all, that our benefit is the fact of helping beyond what happens with the rest of the people. Remember that leadership is the ability to positively influence others, so it is quite likely that the mere fact that one person helps another will inspire others to do so.

Concluding

Do you avoid your responsibility, or do you face it? What would you do if you detected a situation of danger for someone else? How would you like to help others? Do you already do it? In what way?

For a more humane world, welcome to the world of pro-social responsibility.