Murder of Kitty Genovese

I've actually heard of these.

This was spurred by the Kitty Genovese case, wasn't it? The woman who was attacked in New York and dozens of people supposedly heard it from their apartment windows, but nobody called the police.

Yes.

And while the historical details of the Genovese case have been heavily nuanced and corrected by historians over the years, the media narrative at the time completely shocked the public.

McCraney

highlights the story of Kitty Genovese, who was attacked for 30 minutes while dozens of people did nothing.

It's not because they were heartless.

It's because they were all waiting for someone else to act.

I'm gonna go in and do this." And so is the message to not- Be kind not to be lured in because you don't know if it's a mimic or a trick or anything when anybody's doing anything.

But you also have the, like, Kitty Genovese kind of problem where, like, you're like, "Ah, somebody else will fix it," kind of deal.

It is, it i- it is an anomaly.

I'm, I do, I'm pondering it.

... which turned out to be bogus.

Kitty Genovese.

Kitty Genovese, yes.

So the, the headline was, uh, "30, 32 people witness murder, no one calls the police." Uh, a woman named Kitty Genovese re- returned home from work one night and was, uh, brutally attacked, uh-

This was here in New York, I believe

... outside her apartment.

... then how does anybody ever decide who's gonna respond? I mean, then you could get an actual real-life-

Yeah, you could

What are the common misconceptions about how people behave in moments of crisis or need?

Okay, so bystander theory in psychology, it really began in the late 1960s, early 1970s, and it was kind of born out of an anxiety... uh around people living in cities and how that was eroding the social bonds between us there was lots of kind of concern that we no longer took responsibility for the welfare of others because we didn't know folks and there was kind of quite a lot of anxiety about that prompted by several um really famous iconic cases and the one that folks might remember is the case of kitty genevese who appeared on the front page of the New York Times in 1964, her name did, because it was claimed that 38 witnesses watched in a kind of awed fascination, all standing in their windows while Winston Mosley murdered Kitty Genovese in front of them for over a half hour period.

And according to the newspaper report, nobody did anything.

And that created a lot of social anxiety.

iconic early study.

And there's lots of evidence subsequently that there are some things like diffusion of responsibility going on.

But actually, it turns out, we've done quite a lot of research looking at the history of these concepts, that even in the Kitty Genovese case, this famous case where apparently nobody intervened, what you actually find is people did intervene.

There was lots of intervention.

And even chapter 12 on social psychology isn't so bad, including discussions of social roles, cultural norms, persuasion, conformity, groupthink, political polarization, in-groups versus out-groups, and the psychology of love and relationships.

It mentions the Kitty Genovese story and the Stanford prison experiment, but appropriately caveats them as historically important didactic examples which probably didn't occur the way they were classically described.

Its biggest mistake, from my perspective, is citing stereotype threat, not by name, without any caveats.

Social priming is nowhere to be seen.

You can do it, too.

We always start with the Kitty Genovese case, which if you guys are familiar, you know, the bystander effect.

We are not going to be bystanders.

We may not be the cops.

Social proof becomes even more dangerous in emergencies.

Remember the case of Kitty Genovese? A woman was murdered while neighbors watched, but no one stepped in because they all assumed someone else would take action.

Psychologists call this the bystander effect, and it’s a prime example of social proof at its most terrifying.

When you’re unsure of what’s happening, you freeze, waiting for someone else to lead the way.