Genovese Syndrome: What It Is And How It Affects Social Psychology
“Genovese Syndrome”, also known as the Bystander Effect, is a concept that has served to explain the psychological phenomenon by which a person becomes immobilized when witnessing an emergency situation where they would be expected to provide support to someone who is running. a major danger.
In this article we will see what Genovese Syndrome is why it has been called this way and what has been its importance, both in psychology and in the media.
Catherine Susan Genovese, better known as Kitty Genovese, was an American woman of Italian descent who grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. She was born on July 7, 1935, her family moved to Connecticut, and she worked as a restaurant manager.
We can say little more about his life. What we do know, since he has generated every series of hypotheses within social psychology, is how he died. The early morning of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese She was murdered while trying to enter her building located in New York City.
According to the official version, the man who murdered her followed her from her car to the building’s entrance, where he stabbed her. Kitty He tried to avoid it and screamed for help for more than 30 minutes, while the murderer continued the attacks and even raped her before killing her. What happened during those minutes is what has been called Genovese Syndrome: none of her neighbors tried to help her.
The prestigious New York Times spread the news, by journalist Martin Gansberg. Some time later the topic was compiled in a book whose author was the editor of the same newspaper, AM Rosenthal, entitled “38 witnesses.” Among the events narrated, the New York Times stated that, in total, 38 neighbors had witnessed the murder, and None of them had bothered to notify the authorities
For many years this version was taken as the true one, and gave rise to different psychological studies on why people become immobilized or become indifferent to the emergency of others. These studies subsequently had an impact on scientific research on the inhibition of behavior during individual emergencies when living within a group.
Intervention in emergency situations: the Darley and Latané experiment
The pioneering experiment on this phenomenon was conducted by John M. Darley and Bibb Latané, and published in 1968. The researchers hypothesized that the people who witnessed the murder did not help precisely because there were many people. Through their research they suggested that when participants were individual witnesses to an emergency, they were more likely to provide help. While, when an emergency was witnessed as a group, participants were less likely to intervene individually.
They explained that people they became individually indifferent to the emergency when they were in groups because they assumed that someone else would react or would have already helped (precisely because it was an urgent situation).
In other words, the researchers concluded that the number of people who witness an attack is a determining factor in individual intervention. They called the latter “Bystander Effect”.
Likewise, in other experiments it was developed the notion of diffusion of responsibility through which it is explained that the presence of different observers inhibits the response of a spectator when he is alone.
Media impact of Genovese Syndrome
What has recently been problematized about the Kitty Genovese case is the New York Times’ own version of the circumstances under which the murder occurred. Not only has this been problematic, but the media and pedagogical impact that this version had The news about the murder of Kitty Genovese generated scientific hypotheses that were reflected in study manuals and psychology school books, configuring an entire theory on prosocial behaviors.
More recent versions of the New York Times itself report that some facts have been misinterpreted, and that the initial news may have fallen into different biases. The main criticism has been that the number of witnesses has been exaggerated It has recently been questioned that there were actually a total of 38 people witnessing the murder.
Later journalistic investigations speak of the presence of only 12 people, who probably did not witness the complete attack, since the latter had different phases and locations before reaching the murder in the portal. Likewise, the number of attacks originally proposed by the New York Times has been questioned.
Not only that, but recent testimonies speak of at least two neighbors did call the police ; putting into tension both the investigations carried out decades ago by the American newspaper, and the inactivity of the authorities in the face of a crime that could easily be justified as “passionate.” Ultimately, and within social psychology, the variables and theoretical approach that has traditionally based the Bystander Effect have been problematized.
