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| INTRODUCTION | In 1964, Kitty Genovese was attacked, raped and killed in America. 38 people witnessed the incident but nobody took action. Media was outraged with this ‘apathy’ and ‘indifference’. Darley and Latane (1968) were also puzzled why all these people did not come to help Kitty, but not convinced with media’s explanation. Their study of the reports and following experiments led them to a ground-breaking theory, namely, Bystander Intervention. Nearly 35 years after them, a Feminist Critique, Cherry (2003) put their experiments under inspection, saying they haven’t considered the social and individual reasons and their knowledge was situated. This essay will examine both approaches and explain why social psychologists need to be careful when producing knowledge and why latest studies moved from neglecting to help to willingness to help. |
| MAINSTREAM EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH DARLEY & LATANE (1968) | Darley and Latane (1968) suggested that the witnesses did not call the police nor come to help not because they might have been torn between their feelings of responsibility, moral values and fear of something happening to them if they did, but because they believed that other people may already be helping the woman in danger. They were behind the walls and thus unable to see what was happening. So they presumed that ‘someone must be helping her.’ |
| DARLEY & LATANE'S EXPERIMENT | Darley and Latane tested their assumptions on groups of first year psychology students. The students, during the experiment, were supposed to do a one to one telephone interview. During the interview, the interviewee had a fake epileptic fit. Darley and Latane concluded that the higher the group number is, the lesser the intervention is; because the bystanders would believe that there will be other people to help and if they did not help themselves, they would not be blame. This diffusion of responsibility and blame did not work when there was only one bystander. Then the individual’s moral values would come into action and he would help the victim. |
| POSITIVE POINTS OF DARLEY & LATANE'S EXPERIMENT | Positive points – the experiments could be viewed favourably in that they attempted to work with actual lived human experience as opposed to the perceived objectivity. The researchers sought to challenge intrapsychic processes in favour of a social/situational explanation – this was good since it also challenged views of apathy and ‘non-caring’ personal attributes. The study also raised the issue that people are all susceptible to the effects of the situation. |
| CRITICISM OF DARLEY & LATANE'S EXPERIMENTS | Darley and Latane’s studies could be criticised for reducing a social phenomena into measurable variables and trying to make similarity between a real attack situation with a fake medical emergency . There are also some ethical concerns about the participants being subjected to such an unsettling experiment. This brings the issue of power relations into question. Should the researcher have the freedom of misguiding the participants for the sake of producing knowledge? |
| FEMINIST CRITIQUE CHERRY (1995) | Cherry (1995) also criticized Darley and Latane for not taking into account of the social context. She argued that an emergency situation could not be reduced to variables – ie; Darley and Latane examined an emergency situation by using a male participant, not a female one. Also examining a real life situation in laboratory conditions would not yield health results. She also suggested that their knowledge was historically and socially situated. One of the reporters of the time, Rosenthal wrote in his book (1964) that he did not mention that Kitty’s assailant was black, because they did not want to create a furore. Kitty was a white woman who lived in a middle-class white environment. So he saw the issue as a race issue. Cherry however, looks from a different angle. She says at the time, violence against women was seen as normative. As suggested by one of the witnesses, it was thought as ‘ a lover’s quarrel’. They did not go to help not because of the apathy or indifference or not because of diffusion of responsibility, but simply because they thought a woman in distress was not an issue to be interfered with. The women’s position in society at the time was that violence against women was acceptable. |
| CRITICISM OF CHERRY'S APPROACH | Cherry’s approach could be criticized in the way she shifted her perspective. When she was a student, she was a supporter of Darley and Latane’s Bystander theory. As she studied the feminist approach, she started seeing the issue from a gender point of view. Her latest perspective was from the power relations point of view. She thought the issue should be viewed from race, class and poverty terms. From this point of view, we can say that the researcher’s own reflexivity might be affecting the validity of the study. |
| BOROFSKY ET AL | Borofsky et al brought power relations into the question. Their study found that six male observers avoided helping a woman being attacked, and explained this by suggesting that men may perhaps get gratification by seeing a woman attacked by a man. |
| SHORTLAND AND STRAW | Shortland and Shaw’s study provided that people interfered only if they thought the attacker and the victim were strangers, but they did not if they thought they were related. So, violence against women was accepted if they were husband and wife. |
| BOTH BOROFSKY AND SHORTLAND AND STRAW'S STUDIES.... | Both Borofsky and Shortland and Straw studies shifted the importance from bystander intervention to attacks on women. The issue of bystander intervention should therefore be viewed from the point of power. Media at the time did not consider the class, race issues of either the victim or her assailant. No-one looked at the background of the attacker, Winston, or the poverty he was brought up in. We cannot disregard the value of Darley and Latane’s contribution to the theory. Cherry’s approach brought the social context into the phenomena. However, reducing the bystander issue to a gender-only issue would be a mistake. |
| CONCLUSION | Gender and power-relations are key to understanding the murder of Kitty Genovese, according to Cherry. The meaning of the emergency and bystander’s responses is immersed in societal assumptions and values. Cherry does not argue that one form of analysis (ie feminism) should be preferred over another (experimental). Furthermore, a feminist reading of the event would not have been available as a discourse in the 1960’s - even Cherry would not have approached it that way as a student in the 1970's. Her account therefore challenges the view that objectivity in research is possible. |
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