The Kitty Genovese "incident", parts of an essay not used.
The 1964 Kitty Genovese incident is understood as an event of
strangers failing to lend assistance to a victim in an emergency
situation, as an instructional narrative it is found in introductory textbooks and media which feature the description of 38 Bystanders watching the murder of Kitty
Genoese by Winston Moseley (Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 : 555). Explaining this narrative was a significant
motivation in the social psychological research of Bibb Latane &
John Darley which established the “Bystander Effect” (Cherry 1995
: 271). It has subsequently become a modern day secular parable, part
of popular culture that extols the virtue of individuality (Mannig,
Levine & Collins 2007 :556). The reality of the Kitty Genovese incident is different from this common narrative.
The murder which took place in Kew
Gardens district of Queens, New York around 3am on March 13, 1964
(Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :556) consisted of 2 seperate
attacks, the second fatal attack occurring inside the stairwell of
92-96 Austin Street (Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :558) where
she was raped as she lay dying (Cherry 1995 : 273). It was initially
reported in the Long Island Press, with the title “Woman,28, Knifed
to Death” (1964) and then developed into a story covered by two
journalists, Martin Gansberg & A.M. Rosenthal. Gansberg published
his article on March 27th with the headline “37 Who Saw
Murder Didn't Call the Police. Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman
Shocks Inspector”(Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :556). This
article established the main elements of the predominant Kitty
Genoese murder story, 38 individuals watching her murder that
involved 3 seperate attacks by Winston Moseley, for more than over
half an hour (Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :556).
 |
| Mosely & Genovese. |
Although this account simplifies the
incident, the number of witnesses stated in the article cannot be
verified and misses the fact that only some were eye witnesses, while
others only heard the 2 attacks, all the witnesses only saw moments
of the attacks and the second and final attack occurred within the
stairwell with only a small number of potential witnesses. There are
also claims that the police were called immediately after the first
attack by witnesses (Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :557) . This
incident is seen as a signal crime, seen by many as saying something
about the wider culture (Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :556) and
much of the immediate discussion in the media tended to approach the
story from this approach, of course it has dubious utility.
Historically before this signal event,
as described in the Gansberg article (Gansberg 1964), crowds were
seen to be “deindividuating” facilitating active threat behaviour
excitation through collective action as compared to inaction, a
passive threat (Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :560) and thus the
Kitty Genovese incident indicated something counter intuitive up to
that point, that being part of a group can inhibit individuals
responding to an emergency situation. Latane & Darley 1964
suggested the cause of the inaction was due to the presence of other
bystanders, a diffusion of responsibility and the need for social
proof, people when surrounded by strangers will look around at others
for cues on how to react, to define wether or not the situation is
an emergency or not. It was defined in terms of immediate situational
factors (Cheery 1995: 271).
In watching the television documentary
“Bystanders” (TV1 18/3/98), which in the context of this essay I
use as providing first hand narratives from victims and witnesses of
violence I was struck what the stated motivations and cognitions the
Bystander Effect was able to account for and what it did not
accommodate. Of the 10 narratives on the documentary I am focusing on
the narrative of the old lady telling a group of youths not to smoke
on the train and the subsequent abuse she experienced, threats,
cigarettes and beer being pour over her while other people in the
carriaged watched because it has both narratives of the victim and a
witness. Her description as she left the train was “ Humiliated
(TV1 18/3/98 @ 21:11 minutes) did not want to look like a fool
in front of everyone else (TV1 18/3/98 @ 21:41 minutes)” which is
an indication of the victim taking cues from people, the need to
maintain social identity, which every one else, the witnesses are
doing . The witness interviewed described the bystanders to this
event as “Carrying on in true British style.” (TV1 18/3/98 @
13:10 minutes) which also supports the need to maintain social
identity, evincing calm and thus by the principle of social proof the
situation is understood as a non emergency. He also stated that it
“Appeared to be non violent & non physical, may have happened”
(TV1 18/3/98 @ 23:10 minutes) and thus indicated a degree of
uncertainty about the nature of the situation which is an aspect of
the Bystander Effect (Cialdini 1998 : 200).
The witness also indicates that
“interviening” may have presented a “real possibility of danger
to self & escalating situation” (TV1 18/3/98 @ 23:10 minutes)
and these aspects of the situation are not efficiently taken into
account by the Bystander Effect model. Many of the narratives of the
documentary describe the potential and actual cost of intervening,
“destroy ones life”. The narrative of Shaun Haldane stopping
Anthony Kirkwells robbery of a nightclub resulted in Shaun's death
(TV1 18/3/98 @ 37:15 minutes). The research conducted by Latane &
Darley 1964 presented emergency situations that did not present the
threat of violence, possibly and understandably due to ethical
issues in the experimental conditions necessary for this type of
research.
The context of the emergency situation
is significant, whether it is violence, the context of violence and
whether intervention involves the risk of harm. In an early account
recorded by Rosentahal 1964 an onlooker indicated a reluctance to
intervene in a “lovers quarrel” and Latane & Darley's 1964
experiments did not account for the influence of gender (Cheery 1995
: 273).
Later studies conducted in 1976 by
Shotland & Straw have attempted to examine the Genovese attack in
context by staging assaults. They found that intervention was more
likely when the attacker and victim were perceived by onlookers as
being strangers 65%. When the attacker and victim were perceived as
married intervention dropped to 19% . Thus it became possible to
examine the Kitty Genovese incident in terms of social violence
towards women (Cherry 1998 : 276). From there it is also possible to
examine it in terms of race and social class.
“Until we address the reality of the
poor, they will remain locked in the same hermetic and unbroken cycle
of rage and sometimes they will kill each other.”
If we theorize on the level of
community, there have been near prescient aspects
of research conducted on this topic
Solutions proposed to this situation
over time were
to inoculate bystanders to make them
aware of the effect (Mannig, Levine & Collins 2007 :560), knowing ones neighbours, to reduce
faulty inferences and facilitating social control in the community
also indicated issues of bystanders with violence within families
Bibliography
Cialdini, R.B. (1998). Cause of
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Psychology 98/99 (pp 197- 201). Guilford Dushkin/ McGraw-Hill. Pages
197 to 201.
Cheery F. (1995). Kitty Genovese and
culturally embedded theorising. In The Stubborn Particulars of Social
Psychology (pp 16-29). London Routledge. Pages 16 to 29).
Clark, Russel D & Word, Larry E.
(1972). Why don't Bystanders Help? Because of Ambiguity?. In the
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Pages 392 to 400.
Clark, Russel D & Word, Larry, E.
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