In 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in New York. The attacker attacked Genovese three times in the middle of the street within half an hour, in front of thirty-eight neighbors who watched the incident from their windows. However, during this period, none of the thirty-eight witnesses informed the police. This incident created a shock effect. He was seen as an icon of the cold and inhumane effects of city life. The New York Times described the incident as follows:
No one can explain why thirty-eight people did not pick up the phone while Genovese was being attacked, because they themselves cannot explain. But it can be assumed that this indifference is one of the problems of big cities. If a person is surrounded by millions of people, preventing them from constantly influencing him is almost a psychological matter of life and death, and the only way to do this is to ignore these people as much as possible. Man's indifference to his neighbor and his problems is a conditioned reaction in life in New York, as in other big cities.
As mentioned in the article, the uncertainty and alienation of life in big cities makes people harsh and insensitive. However, this situation is more complex. Psychologists decided to conduct a series of studies on this topic and called it the bystander problem. The result they found was quite interesting; How many people witnessed the event was the primary factor in predicting helping behavior.
For example, in one of the experiments, a student was asked to pretend that he was having an epileptic attack in the room he was in. When there was only one person in the adjoining room who heard the sounds, there was an 85% chance that that person would rush to help. But when subjects thought there were four other people hearing about the epileptic seizure, they came to help only 31% of the time. In another experiment, people who saw smoke leaking from under a door were 75% more likely to report that they were alone. However, when they saw it as a group, the rate remained at 38%. When people were in groups, the responsibility for action was distributed among them. They began to think that someone else would report the situation or that the apparent problem was not actually a problem because no one took action.
From here y It can be said that the reason why the witnesses did not inform the police in the Genovese murder was that each of the witnesses thought that there were too many witnesses. This idea that any other witness would definitely report it to the police resulted in the attacker not being found.
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