Kitty Genovese What Would You Do ? - scenarios Bibb and Latane Diffusion of Responsibility

1. The Bystander Effecthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsPfbup0achttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGaJrgi_SpEhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt_ZtfhQ094 Kitty Genovese What Would You Do? - scenarios Bibb and Latane Diffusion of Responsibility Memory of the Camps, Holocaust Bystanders - Case

2. Bystander Effect: • Bystander – person who is not an active participant in a situation – they are standing by and witnessing • Example of human behaviour and response to a situation: The Case of Kitty Genovese

3. The Case of Kitty Genovese The Case of Kitty Genovese - Kitty was murdered on the street outside her New York City apartment after loud shouting was heard - 38 people witnessed the murder but did nothing to stop it Psychologists have long been interested in our unwillingness to get involved in uncomfortable situations even if someone’s personal safety is at risk The Bystander Effect - Kitty Genovese http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdpdUbW8vbw

4. When Bystanders Join in • Whether or not we intervene in a situation depends on the cues that we get from the participants and other bystanders • Relation to Genovese case? • It suggests that if one bystander had joined in to try to help her, others might well have come forward too

5. What Would You Do? Look at these examples… • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIvGIwLcIuw&feature=related • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNu-WZdHzaA • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvA9jT3Scfk&feature=related • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJcAymTu-CE&feature=relmfu What are the factors that people say motivated them to help or not help when they are bystanders in a situation?

6. Factors of Bystander Effect DID NOT ACT: DID ACT:

7. Factors of the Bystander Effect Theory by Bibb Latane and John Darley 4 years after Genovese was murdered, two psychologists, John Darley and Bibb Latane, wanted to identify the factors that influence bystanders’ decisions to get involved in public situations

8. What do we know about the bystander effect? KEY TERM: • Diffusion of Responsibility = the more people in the group, the less likely individuals are to act b/c they think that the responsibility rests with all other bystanders as opposed to when they are the only ones witnessing the situation • People will act differently in various situations…

9. Factors that Cause People to Become Actors • Morals – parents taught you the right thing to do – i.e. damaging someone’s property • Damage done in their community • Fear – don’t want to get in trouble for not helping • Personal – if you were in that situation, you would want help • Stereotypes – racial profiling, gender, age • Pressure from others - conformity

10. Factors that Cause People to Remain Bystanders • Fear – personal safety, mistake (hurting someone…, judgment) • “not my business” – i.e. conflict in a family • Lack information on the situation • Don’t know people involved • Assume someone else will do it – diffusion of responsibility • Inconvenient – busy, don’t want to get involved, don’t have time…

11. Case Study

12. Extreme Case of Bystander Effect – THE HOLOCAUST • On a list of the top 10 most notorious cases of bystander effect, the Holocaust rates #1. • Read the following:

13. The most repugnant, globally violent disgrace of the reputation of humanity gave rise to the equally infamous use of the phrase “diffusion of responsibility,” as the Nazi officers tried at Nuremberg all claimed the same defense, “We were just following orders.” They argued that if the Holocaust really was as bad as journalists were saying, then someone else must surely have known of it, and thus it was not necessarily their responsibility to report it to the authorities.

14. They also argued that the only authorities in Continental Europe at the time were German, and thus, they would only have killed themselves by attempting to inform the outside world, and would have accomplished nothing. This is not true. Most of the German population knew nothing of it, but had they, they could easily have banded together and demanded that the Holocaust be stopped. The Nazis would have been reluctant to exterminate their own “master race,” and by that point, the Allies would have heard news of it. So the Nazis wisely concealed the concentration and death camps from all but the small villages nearest to them

15. The Holocaust achieves #1, however, because the populations of the villages near these camps, Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, and Ravensbruck, to name a few, knew perfectly well of the atrocities and horror inside the camps. The camps were established near fairly large towns and cities, the inhabitants of which could not have ignored the stench coming from them. Allied soldiers all reported smelling camps before finding them, from as far as 20 miles if the wind blew right.

16. The Allies accused the German citizens of these towns of knowing full well what was happening to Jews and other “undesirables” and yet making no effort to save one life. These German populations were thus forced to clean up the emaciated corpses and bury them in mass graves, as punishment for their passivity.

17. QUESTION: What reasons did the Nazi’s give for “standing by”?

18. Memory of the Camps – Bergen Concentration Camp • http://www.didsburyreview.ca/article/20121106/DID0801/311069963/0/did • http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/50000-deaths-at-bergen-belsen-but-only-6851-death-certificates-issued/

19. Extreme Example of Bystander Effect • The Holocaust – Memory of the Camps • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KCup7Fnju4 • Watch (17:10-22:30) • This is a VERY graphic film.