Kitty Genovese
In 1946, twenty eight years old Catherine Genovese was killed on a public street while thirty-eight households did not doing anything and watched a killer stalk and stab more than half an hour. During this period the murder had three chances to kill. She screamed several times, and the windows were open, and lights went on in many apartments at each time. And some came to their windows to see what was happened. And one man screamed that leave her alone. But that was it. No one tried to help her and call to the police. After few minutes, the murder found her and stabbed again and again. The police received a first call after the assailant stabbed her for the third time which means she dead already.
I have learned about this incident when I took the psychology class. This sad story is an example of the bystander effect or a Genovese Symptom, which is where individuals ignore the victim of an emergency situation when they are present at the scene. This story related with the social Influence which is included in the chapter two “Seeing and Thinking sociologically”. In my opinion, an individual human being is undoubtedly the most important factor in our society but the thirty-eight households or bystanders in this case absolutely ignored a completely preventive murder, even though they knew they could have helped her. If they even called the police when they heard her scream for the first time, she might not have been dead.
People are often pretending to care or pay attention, especially if they got a bunch of other people doing it with them. It is a very sad story mostly because all of those thirty eight people did nothing to help this poor girl. There are many murders and they are all sad but this one is at the top because of all the people who did nothing to help. It is disgusting. All they had to do was pick up the phone and make a phone call. It is sad to think that we as a society or a group and so cold and unbiased towards anything that is not our problem or issue. This is the kind of mentality that causes disasters like global warming or the stock crashes and the job markets flunking. We care only about our issues and by doing that we cause so many more for others. It is easy to pass on the blame or work on others. I bet you anything that most of these people that watched this murder though that the others will help or that “someone will call the police, why should I do it as well.”
We need to change as a society and actually start being a group when it comes to issues like these, when someone gets singled out we need to be able to help them and not just watch and pretend we care. We have to address this problem, we have to educate people that they should help and they should be able to step out of the group for even a second to say, this is wrong.