“For more than half an hour 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.” Though this can be thought of as contemptuous, the likeliness of an alternate group taking action is very low. Diffusion of responsibility may be a factor of why those citizens acted as they did—the bystander effect; a case in which an individual may feel less inclined to take action because of the amount and presence of others in a group. There were no tangible forces that could prevent nor reasonably frighten anyone in the bystander group to run to a rotary dial phone and call the police during the assault. It’s alarming that social pressure can be powerful enough to be a reason of death
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With great power comes great responsibility which those bystanders successfully avoided. Maybe because this occurred a few months shy of racial segregation ending, social responsibility wasn’t on the up and up, maybe. But since the area of the event took place on a good neighborhood and Genovese was given ‘Kitty’ as a nickname by almost everyone in the neighborhood, it is safe to assume that it was a middle-class white-dominant neighborhood and Genovese was friendly with the neighborhood overall. It doesn’t add up why the neighbors would shun two opportunities of saving their friend. Days after the murder during an investigation, some witnesses confessed that there was no reason that they didn’t call the police on time. That was the time they realized that they could have intervened indirectly. The responsibility of doing so directly just frightened them. It’s believed that they played victim to the diffusion of responsibility effect, which is a concept stating when individuals are in the presence of others, they feel less personally responsible and are less likely to take action when help is needed in a situation. However, there were two out of the group that loosely attempted to do something about the murder. One who intervened during the second stabbing yelled out of his window, “Let that girl alone!”, in
With great power comes great responsibility which those bystanders successfully avoided. Maybe because this occurred a few months shy of racial segregation ending, social responsibility wasn’t on the up and up, maybe. But since the area of the event took place on a good neighborhood and Genovese was given ‘Kitty’ as a nickname by almost everyone in the neighborhood, it is safe to assume that it was a middle-class white-dominant neighborhood and Genovese was friendly with the neighborhood overall. It doesn’t add up why the neighbors would shun two opportunities of saving their friend. Days after the murder during an investigation, some witnesses confessed that there was no reason that they didn’t call the police on time. That was the time they realized that they could have intervened indirectly. The responsibility of doing so directly just frightened them. It’s believed that they played victim to the diffusion of responsibility effect, which is a concept stating when individuals are in the presence of others, they feel less personally responsible and are less likely to take action when help is needed in a situation. However, there were two out of the group that loosely attempted to do something about the murder. One who intervened during the second stabbing yelled out of his window, “Let that girl alone!”, in