The Kitty Genovese Case And The Diffusion Of Responsibility

In 1964, in case of Kitty Genovese It made the rounds in New York newspapers and was on the front page of the Times. The girl, 29 years old, returned from work at 3 in the morning and parked her car near the building where she lived. There, she was attacked by a mentally disturbed man who stabbed her in the back several times. The girl screamed and one of the neighbors heard her scream. The neighbor only tried to scare away the murderer behind his window. “Leave the girl alone!” But he did not come to her aid or call the police. The killer left temporarily, while Kitty crawled, bleeding, toward her building.

The murderer returned minutes later when the girl was already at the door of the building. He stabbed her repeatedly while she screamed. As he lay dying, he raped her and stole $49 from her. The entire event lasted approximately 30 minutes. No neighbors intervened and only one called the police to report that a woman had been beaten. According to him New York Times, up to 40 neighbors heard the screams According to official records, there were 12. In the case of Kitty Genovese it is irrelevant whether there were 40 people or 12. What is relevant is: Why don’t we help when we know that a person needs help?

Kitty Genovese and the diffusion of responsibility

Kitty Genovese’s case is extreme; However, we live surrounded by situations in which we ignore the help that a person needs. We have become accustomed to walking among homeless people, ignoring requests for help, hearing screams that are not helped, avoiding screams that can make us suspect that there is domestic violence or violence against children. We know that not only murders but abuse occur every day. On many occasions, very close to us.

What is it that leads us to evade our responsibility? Do we really have that responsibility? What psychological mechanisms intervene in the helping processes?

Research

Kitty Genovese’s death caused social psychologists to ask themselves these questions and begin to investigate. From these studies emerged the Theory of Diffusion of Responsibility (Darley and Latané, in 1968), which explained what really happens in these situations, from the phase in which we realize or not that there is a person who needs help, to the decisions we make to help them or not. .

The hypothesis of these authors was that the number of people involved influences the decision making to help That is, the more people we believe may be witnessing that situation, the less responsible we feel to help. Perhaps this is why we do not usually provide help on the street, where there is a lot of traffic, no matter how much someone needs help, just as we ignore very extreme situations of poverty. This mode of apathy ends up transforming into a kind of passive aggressiveness, since by not helping when it is necessary and responsible, we really collaborate in a certain way with that crime or social injustice. The researchers carried out many experiments and were able to prove that their hypothesis was true. Now, are there more factors involved than the number of people?

First of all, Are we aware that there is a help situation? Our personal beliefs are the first factor to help or not. When we consider the person who needs help as the only one responsible, we tend not to help. Here the similarity factor comes into play: whether this person is similar to us or not. This is the reason why certain social classes are not willing to help others, since they consider them far from their status (which is a form of social prejudice, a small form of madness far from human empathy and sensitivity).

To help or not to help depends on several factors

If we are able to detect a situation where a person needs help and we consider that we should help them, then cost and benefit mechanisms come into play. Can I really help this person? What am I going to gain from it? What can I lose? Will I be harmed by trying to help? Again, This decision-making is influenced by our current culture, excessively pragmatic and increasingly individualistic and insensitive

Finally, when we know we can help and are willing to do so, we ask ourselves: should it be me? Isn’t there anyone else? In this phase, fear of others’ responses plays a special role. We think that perhaps others will judge us for wanting to help someone, or consider us similar to the person who needs help (the “only a drunk would approach another drunk” belief).

The main reasons that lead to avoiding the responsibility of providing help

Beyond Darley and Latané’s Theory of Diffusion of Responsibility, today we know that our modern culture plays a key role in repressing our pro-social behavior, a totally natural way of being in human beings, since we are beings. sensitive, social and empathetic by nature (we are all born with these abilities and we develop them or not depending on our culture). These are the locks to help:

1. Am I really responsible for what happens and should I help? (belief derived from modern classism, a social prejudice)

2. Am I qualified to do it? (belief derived from our fear)

3. Will it be bad for me to help? (belief derived from our fear and also from the influence of modern classism)

4. What will others say about me? (fear, about how our self-concept will be affected, a form of selfishness)

All these blockages can be left behind if we consider that we are beings capable of helping, responsible to do so as social and human beings, and above all, that our benefit is the fact of helping beyond what happens to other people. Remember that leadership is the ability to positively influence others, so it is quite likely that the mere fact that one person helps another will inspire others to do so.

Concluding

And you? Do you avoid your responsibility, or do you face it? What would you do if you detected a dangerous situation for another person? How would you like to help others? Do you do it already? How?

For a more human world, welcome to the world of pro-social responsibility