Kitty Genovese

After the murder of Kitty Genovese there were two very different news stories that we have looked in to.

Kitty Genovese was a New York City woman who was stabbed to death outside her apartment building on 13^th March 1964.

According to the New York Times it was “a scene of indifference from the neighbourhood who failed to come to Genovese’s aid”.

Twenty-eight year old Kitty Genovese was walking from her car to her apartment building after finishing work at a bar at around 3am. She parked her car around 100 yards away from her apartment and began to walk towards the entrance. Murderer Winston Moseley approached her, when she ran from him towards the entrance of her apartment he chased her and stabbed her twice in the back.

Genovese screamed and cried out for help, and Moseley ran away. Several of her neighbours in their apartments heard her screaming and crying, but no all of them knew that it was a cry for help.

But why didn’t the witnesses come to Kitty Genovese aid?

It is said that neighbours sat at their windows watching the attack happen for thirty minutes but in other news stories this isn’t the case.

The other news story told us that thirty-seven witnesses supposedly saw or heard the attack but did not call the police. In total there was thirty-eight witnesses. One of the thirty-eight called the police.

There were also problems as those who did see the attack didn’t see the whole attack. The murder occurred in two attacks. During the first attack on the street, some neighbours did have a view of what was happening out on the street. But Genovese then moved into a stairwell of a building, which unfortunately obstructed the view of the second attack.

Many people did intervene even though it was said that people didn’t. Whilst the first attack when a neighbour, Robert Mozer yelled from his window for the attacker to “Let that girl alone!” Apparently one witness even sat by her side whilst help came.

We believe this is what caused Psychologists to look into the bystander effect, also known as “Genovese syndrome”.

Social psychologists Bibb Latane and John Daley popularized the concept of the bystander effect following Kitty Genovese’s murder. The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages individuals from intervening in an emergency situation.

Most recently there has been another case similar to the Kitty Genovese case. On 24^th April 2010, a thirty one year old homeless man named Hugo Tale-Yax was stabbed to death police believed he was billed when trying to stop an attack on a woman.

At least twenty people walked past the dying man lead on the pavement for nearly an hour.

Some of the public turned their heads to look, others stopped to gawk. One man lifts Tale-Yax’s body, which exposed what appeared to be blood on the pavement underneath him, before putting the body back down and walking away.

We’ve looked in to many cases and we agree with the bystander effect.

If you stop and think back to situations in your life we bet you have walked past a situation and when you think back, you feel that maybe you should have stopped.

Not something as serious as murder but smaller scale situations in life which still link to the bystander effect.

References

Kulis, J.V. (2004) The Beauty of Intervention. Professional Safety, 49 (9), 41-43. – Date Accessed 08/12/2015

http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/08/the-murder-of-kitty-genovese-and-the-myth-of-the-heartless-city/400622/ – Date Accessed 11/12/2015

http://www.psychology.about.com/od/socialpsychology/a/bystandereffect.html – Date Accessed 08/12/2015

http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bystander-effect – Date Accessed 08/12/2015

http://study.com/academy/lesson/defining-the-bystander-effect-kitty-genovese-murder-research-by-latane-and-darley.html – Date Accessed 11/12/2015