Bystander Effect

Most people say that they would help someone else in an emergency, but their actions don’t necessarily line up with their intentions.

For instance, in a now famous case from 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was brutally and fatally attacked at her apartment. Despite many people hearing her cries for help, no one called the police or came to assist.

This incident describes the bystander effect—a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses or bystanders do not volunteer to help someone in distress if other people are also present.

While there may be a number of obstacles to helping, one reason might be a concern for the situation: people may worry that attending to the person in trouble would endanger themselves.

However, if that’s the case, then why didn’t anyone help by simply calling the police from the safety of their well-lit apartment?

Ironically, even if her neighbors interpreted the event as an emergency, they likely assumed that someone else called for support. This explanation is called the diffusion of responsibility—a tendency for no one to help out when others are present because the accountability can be dispersed amongst many.

That is, the more people there are, the