The presence of others

1. State Budgetary Educational Establishment
Of higher Professional Education
Of Ministry of Public Health and Social Development
Kursk State Medical University
Department Of General and Clinical Psychology
The Presence of Others
(Bystander Effect)
Name: Gustavo Duarte Viana
Group: 17
Instructor: Natalia Eskova Yurievna
Kursk
2012

2. Content
1. Bystander Effect
2. Kitty Genovese
3. Factors leading to the bystander effect
Situational ambiguity
Unfamiliarity
Perceived Cost
Diffused responsibility
Similarity
Mood
Gender
Attributions of the cause of need
Social norms
4. Simply everyday life bystander effect
5. Notorious cases of victims by the bystander effect
Shanda Sharer
Ilan Halimi
Yue Yue
6. Comparison of the three accidents involving the bystander effect
7. General conclusion
8. References

3. 1: Bystander Effect
The bystander effect is the somewhat controversial name given to a social psychological phenomenon in
cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The
probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely proportional to the number of
bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of
them will help. This list describes the prototype of the effect and cites nine particularly heinous
examples.
2: Kitty Genovese
The most infamous example of the bystander effect took place on March 13, 1964, in Kew Gardens,
Queens, NY, when Catherine Genovese was entering her apartment building at about 3:15 AM, from
work. She was stabbed twice in the back by Winston Moseley, a heavy machine operator, who later
explained that he simply “wanted to kill a woman.”
Genovese screamed, “Oh, my God! He stabbed me! Help me!” and collapsed. Several neighbors in
surrounding buildings reported hearing her voice, but decided it was probably just a drunken brawl or
lovers’ spat. One man shouted from his window, “Let that girl alone!” which scared Moseley away.
This neighbor was sure to have seen Genovese crawling across the street, under a streetlight, to her
apartment, but did nothing to help her. Witnesses saw Moseley drive away, then return about 10
minutes later. He had put on a wider-rimmed hat to hide his face, and searched for Genovese in the
parking lot, the train station, and the apartment complex, for 10 minutes, before finding her prone in
the external hallway at the rear of the building, where the door was locked. She could not get in.
Moseley proceeded to stab her to death, inflicting multiple wounds in her hands and forearms,
indicating that she tried to fight him off. She finally succumbed and he raped her as she lay dying. He
then stole around $50 from her and fled. The whole incident spanned 30 minutes.
A newspaper blasted it the next day as “Thirty-eight Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call Police,” but this is
inaccurate. There were approximately 12 people who claimed to have seen the first attack. Many of
them later stated that they “just didn’t want to get involved”. A simple phone call to the police would
have sufficed, but everyone assumed someone else would do it.
After this tragic occurred, the psychologists begin more deeply research about this phenomena and
named as bystander effect or sometimes called by Genovese Syndrome.

4. (Kitty Genovese)
3: Factors leading to the bystander effect
Situational ambiguity: indicated to involve uncertainly situation as for example
when people think that it is not a emergency that it is just a fight between a
couple.
Unfamiliarity: people are less likely to help people when they are in unfamiliar
environment then in a familiar one.

5. Perceived Cost: the likelihood of helping decreases as the perceived cost increase,
people don’t want to pay anything that unfortunately comes with this helping in
the emergency.
Diffused responsibility: This occurs when observers all assume that someone
else is going to intervene and so each individual feels less responsible and
refrains from doing anything.
Similarity: people are more likely to help people that are more like to
themselves, these similarity are connected with the same race, belief, financial
status, religious, color of skin, nationality. People are more likely to help other
people from the same professional life and that dress like them then helping
people that are not from the same professional carrier or are not dressed like
them, people are likely to help at first place their relatives them others.
Mood: people are willing for helping depending on their emotional states, if
they have a lot of problem and they are sad, less likely they would help others,
they think that they also need help, why should I help someone else.
Gender: women has seemed more likely for helping then men, and the
women is also more acceptable to receive any help from strangers then men.
Attributions of the cause of need: people are much more likely to help
others the judge to be innocent victims then those they believe have brought
their problems on themselves. Thus they may fail to lend assistance to a
homeless people, drunk or drug addicts whom they feel that “deserves what
they get”.
Social norms: in this case people are more likely to help if they expected to
help in a social situation, it is when their behavior is observed by others.
4: Simply everyday bystander effect
An simple bystander effect example that everybody bypassed sometimes in
the social environment is that when someone is smoking next to a person that
does not smoking or even hate smoking and its smell and the smoking cause
to this person allergic reaction, this person feels not familiar or comfortable to
ask who is smoking to stop, even if they are in a non-smoking area.
In this cause, more people smoking in a non-smoking area, less likely this
person will ask them to stop.

6. 5: Notorious cases of victims in the bystander effect
Shanda Sharer
From the 10th to the 11th of Janury, 1992, 12-year-old Shanda Sharer was abducted and tortured by
four teenage girls, Laurie Tackett, Melinda Loveless (a propo), Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence. Tackett
was more or less the leader of the four, and interested the others in the Goth lifestyle, punk rock,
vampirism, witchcraft, Satanism, lesbianism, and such, and devised the plan for abducting Sharer and
stabbing her to death, out of revenge for stealing Loveless’s girlfriend.
They abducted Sharer from her house just after midnight, pretending to take her to see their mutual
friend, Amanda Heavrin, the girlfriend Loveless believed Sharer to have stolen. As soon as she was in the
car, Loveless put a knife to her throat and interrogated her about Heavrin, until they arrived at “the
Witch’s Castle,” a local run-down house where teenagers liked to hang out.
They took her inside, tied her up and discuss how they would kill her, at which point Sharer started
crying. They claim to have been frightened by passing headlights, so they took her to a nearby landfill in
thick woods, where Loveless beat her savagely with her fists. Lawrence and Rippey claim to have wanted
out of the situation by this point, but did not dare try to run and call the police.

7. Loveless then tried to cut Sharer’s throat but the knife was too dull. Rippey then got out, had Loveless
and Tackett hold her down, and strangled her with a rope. They thought she was dead and threw in the
trunk, then went to Tackett’s home to wash up. They heard Sharer screaming, and Tackett went out
with a kitchen knife and returned covered in blood. The screaming had stopped.
She then took out her runes, part of the Wicca lifestyle, and told the girls’ futures. They then Tackett
and Loveless went joyriding from 2:30 AM, while Lawrence and Rippey stayed at her home. Sharer
began struggling to get out of the trunk, so Tackett stopped, and beat her unconscious with a tire iron.
They returned a little before dawn, washed up again, and Tackett laughed as she told what she had
done. They left and went to a neighborhood burning area, where leaves and limbs, etc., are disposed of,
and showed Sharer, nearly dead in the trunk to the others. Lawrence claimed to have been so disgusted
that she turned away. She still refused to rat out her friends. Tackett sprayed Sharer with Windex,
probably to exacerbate her wounds, and taunted her, “You’re not looking so hot, now, are you?”
They then filled a 2-liter Pepsi bottle with gasoline at a nearby station, drove to a secluded field, laid
Sharer, alive, in a blanket in the grass, doused and set her afire. Loveless returned a moment later and
poured the rest of the gasoline on her, to be sure.
Lawrence was scared to death by this point, and finally called a friend of the same age, and told her
what had happened. She refused to call the police, now out of fear as an accomplice. Loveless strangled
became hysterical, sorry about what she had done, and called Amanda Heavrin to tell her. Heavrin did
not believe them, until she and another friend saw the trunk of Tackett’s car with blood and Sharer’s
socks.
None of them called the police. Sharer’s body as discovered by two hunters earlier that morning, the
11th, and reported. By 8:00 PM that night, the whole community knew, and Loveless finally confessed in
a fit of hysteria to the police. Tackett, Loveless, and Rippey were sentenced to 60 years in prison,
Lawrence 20 years. Lawrence was released on good behavior in 2000, Rippey in 2006.

8. Ilan Halimi
Ilan Halimi was a French Jew who was kidnapped in Paris by Moroccan “barbarians,” as they like to be
called, on Janury 21, 2006, and tortured for 24 days, finally dying on February 13. During this time, his
kidnappers, at least 20 of them, beat him all over his body, especially his testicles, completely wrapped
his head in duct tape, except for his mouth, so he could breathe and eat, stabbed him, burned his body
and face with lighters and cigarettes, and broke his fingers in order to extract a ransom of 450,000 Euros
from his family. They stripped him, they scratched him, they cut him with knives, and finally poured
gasoline on him and set him afire.
During these three weeks, neighbors in the apartment block where his kidnappers had taken him (and
where they lived) heard the commotion and came to watch. No one ever called the police. 27 people
have so far been charged with joining in. 19 people have been convicted and given long prison
sentences. One of the torturer’s fathers knew what was happening and did nothing to stop them. This
man, Alcino Ribeiro, was sentenced to 8 months, but this sentence was suspended. He has served no
time.
Those neighbors known only to have watched were not convicted, most not even indicted. Halimi was
found handcuffed and bound with nylon rope, naked, to a tree about 40 yards inside a woodlot from a
railway outside Paris, on February 13. More than 80% of his body had been burned with acid, as well as
gasoline, to the point that he was difficult to recognize. He had severe contusions, blood blisters, and
hematomas covering most of his body, to the point that he was more blue than flesh-colored, multiple
broken bones, one ear and one big toe missing, and his testicles looked like “blackened oranges.”
Halimi died en route to a hospital.

9. Yue Yue
The chinese girl of 2 years old that was crushed by two vans and 20 people bypassed and none of them
helped her.
6: Comparison of the three accidents involving the bystander effect
In those three cases above, we analyze that if someone would interview on
that situation, they could had escaped alive from the killers or escaped and
gone up to a hospital for the primary aim. But they preferred to do not involve
them on the problems of the responsibility to themselves, even when they are
already involved in the process as in the case of Shanda Sharer and Yue Yue.
7: General conclusion
We typically think that the more people who witness a crime, the more people
there will be to help the victim, but these classic social psychology experiments
call this assumption into question. By making yourself and others aware of the
factors that lead to such bystander apathy, we can hopefully make events like
those that occurred in Richmond, CA and Bedford, MA a thing of the past.
In USA is stipulated that 2000 people could survive from begin slain, if the
people that is in the visibly surroundings just call a anonymous calling to
the police.

10. 8: References
http://www.slideshare.net/EvanJFranz/bystander-effect-14459049
http://listverse.com/2009/11/02/10-notorious-cases-of-the-bystander-
effect/
https://www.google.com/#hl=pt-BR&tbo=d&sclient=psy-
ab&q=bystander%20effect%20factors&oq=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.
r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355325884,d.Yms&fp=f0ebf39bb5e97456
&bpcl=39967673&biw=910&bih=416&pf=p&pdl=300
http://lilitheden.hubpages.com/hub/The-Bystander-Effect-The-Case-of-
Kitty-Genovese
http://www.slideshare.net/colonelhomer/bystander-effect-article