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Bibb Latane Experiments

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Catherine Genovese was about to walk into her apartment late at night when all of a sudden, a man attacked her with a knife. As she was stabbed and raped by the man, lights flashed on from the windows of surrounding apartment buildings. Although she screamed for help several times, nobody came out to aid her. After the murder concluded and a case erupted, it was reported that there were thirty-eight witnesses watching from their windows. John Darley and Bibb Latané were two young psychologists who read about this incident, and they were inspired to study the subject of witness behavior. They conducted several experiments in which they tested the conditions necessary for people to ignore someone’s cry for help. There is a notable quote that Slater includes that states …show more content…

As this took place, all the other boys and I just watched him do this, glancing at each other to see if anybody would put a stop to it. Nobody did anything. Last year at my summer camp, however, I noticed that two kids were fighting over a game and I immediately broke them up. Not only that, but I sat both of the kids down and worked out a solution between the two of them. One of the experiments that Darley and Latane conducted involved a college student that was put in a room and made to believe there were students in other rooms next to him, by putting tape recorders in them. One of the tape recorders played a recording of what sounded like a student having a seizure. The results showed that 31% of students reacted to help the student having a seizure when they thought others were around, but 85% tried to help when they thought they were the only person around. This goes to show that in my life, it is easier to take action when you are the only one around (in the vicinity of the situation), but that if you are surrounded by others it is more difficult for individuals to take authority to help somebody

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685 Words | 3 Pages

On the night of January 20th, 1998 in Escondido, California, the lives of the family of 12 year old Stephanie Crowe were turned upside down. Stephanie’s body was discovered lifeless on her bedroom floor by her parents and grandmother. Stephanie had been stabbed 9 times, and there was no sign of forced entry into the house. The young girl’s window was unlocked that night but there was a screen in place and there was no evidence showing there was an entry through the window. The sliding glass door in the parent’s, Steve and Cheryl Crowe, room was also unlocked but they claimed they would’ve heard if someone had came through the door because of the blinds on the door.

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621 Words | 3 Pages

On November 16, 1983, a 28-year-old woman was attacked as she was walking home from work in Lowell, Massachusetts. “The second victim had been on her way home from work when she was pushed to the ground by a man wielding a knife” (“Innocence Project”). The second victim attack was less than

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213 Words | 1 Pages

n February of 1982 in Brooklyn, New York a woman was attacked by two men who were wearing masks. She was tied up, robbed, beaten and set on fire. She had survived the attack, but sustained multiple injuries, including injuries to her eyes. The victim believed her neighbor, Calvin Boyette, was one of the men who had assaulted her. She even pointed him out in a photo lineup.

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702 Words | 3 Pages

This week’s topic was very interesting to learn about how important eyewitnesses can be when a crime and accidents do occur. In the case that was presented in the 60-minute segment of Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson is exactly how legal system can fail us when it comes to the eyewitnesses’ identification testimony and how a person’s perception and memory can be altered. The aspect of psychology and law research from this week’s course material is most relevant to the topic of perception and memory. The memory has different stages the first is encoding the process of entering perception into memory.

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607 Words | 3 Pages

Kitty Genovese Essay On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed by Winston Moseley multiple times and died a little later. However, the crazy part of this murder is that 37 people saw or heard Kitty being murdered, yet they did nothing to attempt to save her. Police questioned the bystanders of their abnormal behavior, but they couldn’t respond. “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police” and “The Kitty Genovese Murder: What Really Happened?” are two articles that discuss this bizarre incident.

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699 Words | 3 Pages

Kitty (Catherine) Genovese was stabbed on the night of March 14,1964 with multiple supposed eyewitnesses but yet not one of them seemed to have called the police even hearing her pleas and cries for help. If only one of those eyewitnesses stepped up and called would it have saved Miss Catherine Genovese? Miss Genovese was getting home from work and exiting her vehicle when she saw a stranger approaching her, she started heading the opposite direction of her home. Catherine “got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore before the man grabbed her”(Pg 128) and stabbed her once in the middle of the street. The stranger returned a second time to Miss Genovese, she trying to make her way around the building that is by her apartment.

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1165 Words | 5 Pages

To be a privileged Caucasian male in America is to be found guilty of three counts of sexual assault and receive a recommended sentence of six years out of the maximum fourteen that these crimes carry. Brock Turner is the privileged student of Stanford University that ended up being sentenced to only six months out of the six years but, only served a brief ninety days in county jail. People vs. Turner features young college student Brock turner and his crimes of sexual assault against an unconscious ‘Jane Doe’ behind a garage dumpster. Although physical and eyewitness testimony concluded that Jane Doe was unconscious during the time of the assault and for the following hours, Brock Turner stated the encounters were consensual. As the case unraveled

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752 Words | 4 Pages

The murder of Kitty Genovese took place on March 13th, 1964 outside of her apartment building in New York. She was attacked three separate times by Winston Moseley, the perpetrator. This particular murder got headline news due to the witnesses of the murder and what was done to intervene. The New York Times were a huge part of the headlines due to their original article written about the murder, which was said to be fabricated for attention purposes. The article claimed that 37-38 people were eye witnesses to the murder during the three different attacks, but no one decided to report the crime to the police which definitely raised some eyebrows.

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1696 Words | 7 Pages

As an example, in 1990, a number of brutal attacks were made against elderly victims in Goldsboro, and the unknown criminal was only branded the name “night stalker”, as he was never found (Walton 246). Such cases are not restricted to Goldsboro, North Carolina but are reported all over the country (Shoester 187). During one of the attacks in March 1990, an aged woman was forcefully raped and left at the point of death, except that the daughter’s arrival the next morning allowed medical care save her life (Shoester 187). In a hurry to leave the crime scene, the criminal left the items he intended to use in burning the house so that he could conceal the evidence that would be collected from the site. In July of the same year, a similar case happened, but in the July case, the woman was raped and later murdered by the criminal.

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834 Words | 4 Pages

Bystander behaviour can generally be described as the actions people take when they witness an emergency situation in a public place. There have been many studies on bystander behaviour, this essay will explore two approaches to explain this behaviour. It will look at the experimental method performed by Latané and Darley and at the discourse analysis done by Levine. First the essay will describe and outline the methods.after that it will examine the similarities as well as the contrast between those techniques. Latané and Darley did their research on bystander behaviour in the aftermath of the murder case of Catherine `Kitty´ Genovese,which happened in the Suburbs of New York in 1964.

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1447 Words | 6 Pages

Part One is very informational and contains the bulk of the book’s research. The information was presented in a thesis format; Loftus stated a claim and then supported her ideas with research and quotations from experts in the field of law and memory. Part One is helpful for psychologists, attorneys, and interested law people. The major principles concerning the errors in eyewitness testimony are supported by research and are accepted by psychologists (Kassin, Ellsworth, & Smith, 1989). Part One will contribute to the future of psychology by showcasing how the memory works and the different ways it is manipulated and changed: this will allow jurors and lawyers to become more wary when dealing with a traumatized

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1263 Words | 6 Pages

The Bystander Effect: A Result of a Human Drive Repetitive cries and screams for help were heard in Kew Gardens, New York on the Friday night of March 13th in 1964. As the 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was approaching her doorstep, an attacker –Winston Moseley- came from behind and started to stab her repeatedly. Despite her loud calls for help, turning on the bedroom lights along the neighborhood is all what her calls were capable of. None of the thirty nearby neighbors wanted to go under the spotlight of answering the call of duty so it wasn’t before 20 minutes when the anonymous hero that lived next door decided to call the police. It was four years later when our victim’s story became the perfect example to explain the social psychological

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1367 Words | 6 Pages

Both Latané and Darley 's use of the experimental method and Levine 's use of discourse analysis aim to gain insight as to why the bystander phenomenon occurs, and are interested in why humans seemingly go against their better nature and choose not to help others. (The Open University, 2015a) Latané and Darley 's(1970) cited in Byford, (2014, p.229) experiment consisted of a lab-controlled test and used their quantitative results in order to understand the bystander effect and concluded that people are significantly less likely to respond when in the “passive confederate condition” and most likely to respond when in the “alone condition.” Levine 's (1999) cited in Byford (2014, p.236) viewing of qualitative evidence meant that he was able to determine factors he felt led to the explanation of this effect, such as the examination of the Bulger case and others ' feeling as though they should not become involved in family matters. Both of these experiments were conducted in order to more clearly understand Bystander behaviour and the reasons

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1564 Words | 7 Pages

Latane and Darley used this method to examine bystanders behaviour. (Latane and Darley, 1970, cited in Jovan Byford, 2014, p. 229 - 234) Latane and Darley counted the number of participants in each condition who responded to the staged emergency within two minutes in the experiment that they created. They compared the outcomes from each condition and presented the finding of their experiment in the form of graphs and numbers. (Latane and Darley, 1970, cited in Jovan Byford, 2014, p. 229 - 231) Therefore, the experimental method, without a shadow of a doubt is a quantitative method and it is thought to uncover the general

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1212 Words | 5 Pages

A group of scientists has hypothesized that females are more likely to cooperate in helping someone who dropped their papers. However, the males resulted to participate in helping a person when the papers fell. Scientists have also inferred that if people are walking alone they would tend to help more because people that are in groups are easily distracted with one another. However, in experiments done, females who walked in groups were proven to help more. It came to their attention that people are most likely to help if they are in groups because they feel more comfortable.

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