The Bystander Effect--Fact And Fiction

 Greg Ellifritz's most recent Weekend Knowledge Dump included a link to an article on the bystander effect published at Aeon Magazine and entitled "Good Samaritans after all" by Melanie McGrath. The article discusses some recent research into what is termed "the bystander effect": "a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present." 

        The classic example of the bystander effect is the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City in 1964, where numerous witnesses allegedly failed to render assistance and ignored screams for help from Genovese who stabbed and severely wounded by her attacker, who then left because he thought her cries for help would draw attention, then later returned and killed Genovese. The story was sensationalized by The New York Times, which was later revealed to have grossly misreported and misrepresented the facts. When The New York Times finally came clean in 2016, it reported:

While there was no question that the attack occurred, and that some neighbors ignored cries for help, the portrayal of 38 witnesses as fully aware and unresponsive was erroneous. The article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses and what they had perceived. None saw the attack in its entirety. Only a few had glimpsed parts of it, or recognized the cries for help. Many thought they had heard lovers or drunks quarreling. There were two attacks, not three. And afterward, two people did call the police. A 70-year-old woman ventured out and cradled the dying victim in her arms until they arrived. Ms. Genovese died on the way to a hospital.

Thus, the Genovese incident is, in fact, a very poor example as to the bystander effect because people had indeed heard her initial cries for help and called the police. But Genovese had made her way into the vestibule at the back entrance of the apartment building, and so was no longer visible. (The police did not initially respond, thinking that it was a domestic dispute). When her attacker returned and found her, she was no longer in view or hearing of bystanders. Nevertheless, her final cries were heard by a neighbor who found her and tried to help her, and police were called. Unfortunately, as noted earlier, Genovese died en route to the hospital.

    Returning to the article at Aeon Magazine, McGrath notes that the bystander effect was first described in 1968 by the social psychologists Bibb Latané at Columbia University in New York and John Darley at New York University, and motivated by the New York Time's largely fictional account of the Genovese murder. McGrath explains:

Latané and Darley’s research suggested that the greater the number of onlookers the less likely anyone was to step in, especially if others around them appeared calm or unconcerned. Whereas lone bystanders stepped forward to help a victim 85 per cent of the time, only 31 per cent of witnesses intervened when they were part of a group of five. Latané and Darley labelled this phenomenon ‘diffusion of responsibility’, which along with ‘evaluation apprehension’ (concern about how any intervention might be interpreted) and ‘pluralistic ignorance’ (if everyone else seems calm, there’s nothing to worry about) make up what has become known as the bystander effect or bystander apathy.

 But, McGrath goes on, more recent research suggests that Latané and Darley’s model is far too simplistic and perhaps needs to be abandoned. She writes:

More recent studies suggest that bystanders do (or do not) intervene for reasons far more complex and individuated than Latané and Darley’s psychosocial model allows. In fact, the newest research calls that model into question entirely, suggesting that the way our brains process a violent event in the immediate instant, when intervention is most likely, is largely reflexive and unconscious. When it comes to witnessing violence, bystanders are in general more likely to intervene once cognition overrides reflexes, whether or not they are in groups. Understanding bystander responses this way challenges the idea that our moral compasses turn sketchy when we can offload responsibility for the Good Samaritan stuff onto somebody else; plus, when it comes to matters of survival, it suggests that some kind of group solidarity or species-wide empathy comes into play. Instead of characterising us as shirkers, willing to let others step up, this model argues that, when someone else’s survival might be at stake, we tend to do the right thing – and when we don’t, it could be the result of neurological processes beyond our immediate control. The implications for social psychology, ethics, the law and policy could be profound.