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Evaluate The Bystander Theory In The Case Of Kitty Genovene

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In 1964, a young woman Kitty Genovese was coming home from work. She was murdered by a man, and while she screamed outside her apartment, 38 witnesses saw this murder and did nothing. Her murder sparked up one of the biggest psychological theories, the bystander effect. The bystander theory is an individual is less likely to offer help to a victim in the presence of other people. Psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané were interested in this case and decided to look more into it. They set up an experiment to prove their hypothesis that the larger the number of people who witnesses an event decreased the willingness of an individual to help. Darley and Latané got students from a psychology class from New York University to help in this experiment of theirs. They told the …show more content…

There were multiple groups. Group 1 had two people, Group 2 had three people, and Group 3 had six people. Each participant was alone, and they were not talking to each other as it was all recorded but they didn’t know it. Darley and Latané have a fake recorded seizure emergency call to go over the intercoms to see how long it took for the students to react and help the other student have a ´seizure´. As the emergency fake seizure call went on, the group's results were very different from one another. Group 1 with two people, both reported a seizure emergency. In group 2 with three people, only 85% of participants reported the emergency. In group 3 with six people, only 60% of participants reported the emergency. Group 1 took less than a minute to report, although group 3 was over 3 minutes. (Hock, 2015) The psychologists found out that if you witness an emergency in which someone may require help, many factors affect your decision to step in and offer assistance. Other factors fall into play that could affect someone's decision to help. Such as being scared of being wrong, embarrassed, or having a shy

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After a young lady, Kitty Genovese, was stabbed to death, it was found that there were about 38 witnesses to the stabbing but none of the people had tried to help Genovese in any way. Of the 38 witnesses, no one had even called the police (Darley & Latane, 1968). Researchers were curious as to why in emergency situations, bystanders do not help the person in need. They found that in Genovese’s situation, most witnesses saw that there were many others watching. The responsibility to help, and also the blame of not helping, was spread out amongst the witnesses.

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However, there are some things that can break the bystander effect. When one person decides to help the other human in distress it is very likely that other people will join in to helping them. Another thing, if this person dressed up in something modern that an important person would wear to a business meeting or a fancy party. What happens is the people think that because that person is dressed up like them they are “One of us” and they also think that it could be them in distress. In other words, they have more empathy for people they view as similar to them.

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The experiment would last for about six minutes because they were trying to stick closely to Genovese’s suffering time. One colleague would pretend to have a seizure while several of the subjects could hear but not see what was happening to the seizing colleague. The subjects also knew the seizing man was prone to having seizures because he told them in the beginning of the experiment that he was prone to having them. The subjects couldn’t hear the other subjects so Darley and Latané could determine if the subjects would react on their own because of what they were hearing from the seizing colleague. This would also imitate Genovese’s murder circumstances because the thirty-eight witness were all in their own apartments when the murder occurred.

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Every day many of us are faced with the question, “Should I step in and help?”. Some of us immediately think yes and jump in to help, while others believe it is better to keep walking. The bystander effect happens when a person does not stop and help because they think someone else will. In these situations, some people stand up and respond to the crisis, because they are not worried about what will happen to them, but what will happen to the person in crisis instead. In the novel Night and the poem “The Hangman”, the bystander effect took place because people were afraid to bring attention to themselves.

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This experiment is important because the results showed how people are more likely rely on others to make a decision in a discomforting situation resulting in no one making a decision. In the Genovese case many people saw her attacker, but did not call the police claiming “I thought someone else had call

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In 1964 John Darly and Bibb Latane two young psychologists from Queens, New York did an experiment in “crisis management”. In the experiment Darley and Latane, focused on a larger group rather than individual people. The basis of the experiment was a result of the devastating murder of Catherine Genovese. She was murdered and raped in the short period of 35 minutes with more than 30 witnesses capable of hearing and seeing it all yet no one found it necessary to help her or at least seek help from the authorities. Darly and Bibb as many other people wonder why no one help Catherine.

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The public is the audience. It is the bystander effect that is being conveyed in the message. In the message, it was emphasized that we should take action and help when we come across someone in need, underscoring the reality of the bystander effect in this situation. Informing people on why it is important to take action when we see a crime taking place was the purpose. The implication of this article is the negative effects of bystander effect.

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The article explores the psychological factors that influence bystander behavior, such as diffusion of responsibility and the fear of going against social norms. It shows how individuals may hesitate to help others in need due to the fear of being ostracized by their community, which can impact their conscience and moral

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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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One reason bystanders do not take action is because of the “bystander effect.” The bystander effect is a psychological phenomenon in which individuals, typically surrounded by others, do not demonstrate any course of action in helping victims in distress. Social psychology professors, John Darley

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The bystander law forces people to intervene when someone is in danger, but does that mean you have to put yourself in danger too? Jack Sanders’ story shows how dangerous it can be to put yourself out there. The bystander law originates from the phenomenon

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If you are a bystander you have to try to help the person getting prosicuted. This can be seen in To Kill A Mockingbird, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, an Killers of a Dream. If you are a bystander then you´re not innocent because you could be watching someone suffer and in pain. If you are a bystander then you´re not innocent because you could be watching someone suffer and in pain. People in WW11 would watch Hitler Prosicute Jewish poeple but not do anything about it just becuase they were scared.

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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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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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