The Bystander Effect

There was no bystand­er effect — but there is one anyway.

In 1964, Winston Moseley murdered Kitty Genovese.

Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old New York res­id­ent, and the assail­ant knifed her repeatedly near her home before drag­ging her into a nearby alley, where he raped her. 

Genovese died in the ambu­lance on her way to the hospital. 

Two weeks after the dread­ful event, The New York Times ran the story of how 38 people saw Genovese get stabbed, raped, and murdered in the street — and no one came to her aid.

That was how the story was repor­ted.
But that wasn’t exactly what happened.

Here goes:

Bystander Effect

Bystander effect: “Our team has been strug­gling with the new soft­ware integ­ra­tion, but since no one else is speak­ing up about it, I assume it’s not a big deal.”

The bystand­er effect occurs when indi­vidu­als are less likely to act or inter­vene in a situ­ation because they believe someone else will do so or assume the issue is not urgent. This psy­cho­lo­gic­al phe­nomen­on often leads to inac­tion, espe­cially in group set­tings where the respons­ib­il­ity for address­ing a prob­lem is dif­fuse or unclear.

In a busi­ness con­text, the bystand­er effect can res­ult in unad­dressed issues, as employ­ees, teams, or lead­ers hes­it­ate to step in and take respons­ib­il­ity. When no one act­ively raises con­cerns or offers solu­tions, prob­lems can per­sist or escal­ate, neg­at­ively affect­ing pro­ductiv­ity, mor­ale, and organ­iz­a­tion­al outcomes.

To counter the bystand­er effect, busi­ness lead­ers must foster a cul­ture of account­ab­il­ity and pro­act­ive prob­lem-solv­ing. Encouraging indi­vidu­als to take own­er­ship of issues, speak up when some­thing isn’t right, and col­lab­or­ate to find solu­tions helps ensure that chal­lenges are addressed before they become more con­sid­er­able obstacles. 

Organisations can over­come the bystand­er effect and drive mean­ing­ful pro­gress by emphas­iz­ing per­son­al respons­ib­il­ity and cre­at­ing an envir­on­ment where all voices are valued.

Waiting for oth­ers to stand against evil is its own kind of evil.

Learn more: The Bystander Effect

There Was No Bystander Effect

The dread­ful murder of Kitty Genovese became known in sci­entif­ic lit­er­at­ure as the bystand­er effect, where indi­vidu­als are less likely to help a vic­tim if there are sev­er­al bystand­ers. Genovese’s murder is used as a case study in numer­ous psy­cho­logy textbooks.

However, the prob­lem was that the media didn’t accur­ately report Kitty Genovese’s murder. 

There were wit­nesses to the mur­der­er, but they didn’t see enough of what happened to under­stand that an assault was occur­ring. They reportedly thought it was a couple arguing. 

There was no “bystand­er effect.”
However, the bystand­er effect still proved to be a nat­ur­al phenomenon.

Kitty Genovese’s murder sparked sev­er­al sci­entif­ic stud­ies, prov­ing the bystand­er effect accur­ate (as a form of dif­fu­sion of respons­ib­il­it­ies).

One could argue that The New York Times got away with a mis­lead­ing art­icle since it led to a psy­cho­lo­gic­al discovery. 

Kitty Genovese and The New York Times

In 2016, when the man con­victed of Kitty Genovese’s murder, Winston Moseley, died in pris­on, The New York Times appen­ded an editor’s note to the online archive of the ori­gin­al art­icle. It reads:

“Later report­ing by The Times and oth­ers has called into ques­tion sig­ni­fic­ant ele­ments of this account. Subsequent Times cov­er­age includes a review of the case on the 40^th anniversary; the obit­u­ary of the killer; an essay and video on the case; and a Times Insider account.”

Coincidentally, the pop­u­lar HBO show Girls ran an epis­ode inspired by Kitty Genovese’s death just before word got out on Winston Moseley’s death. And in an edit­or­i­al that same year, after numer­ous crit­ic­al art­icles about their report­ing, The New York Times wrote:

“The facts, how­ever, turned out to be quite dif­fer­ent. Yes, some neigh­bors had ignored Ms. Genovese’s pleas for help. But later invest­ig­a­tions found that only a couple of them had a clear sense of what was hap­pen­ing, or had even caught glimpses of the attacks as they occurred. Many of the 38 thought they heard a fight between drunk­en people or lov­ers. But real­ity has, to some degree, been beside the point. A paradigm of danger and indif­fer­ence in an anonym­ous city had taken hold.”

The con­victed mur­der­er, Winston Moseley, pub­lished his thoughts in The New York Times in 1977. It’s a strange read as Mosely, in passing, sug­gests that his actions came to push soci­ety in a pos­it­ive direction:

“The crime was tra­gic, but it did serve soci­ety, urging it as it did to come to the aid of its mem­bers in dis­tress or danger.”

As for the bystand­er effect, there are implic­a­tions for our digit­al age spe­cific­ally. In 2017, two teen­age boys raped a 15-year-old girl while live-stream­ing the assault on Facebook Live. 

NPR (National Public Radio) wrote:

“About 40 people may have watched the rapes on Facebook as they happened, but none of them repor­ted the crimes to the police. That’s rais­ing eth­ic­al and leg­al ques­tions about those who wit­nessed the crime, includ­ing wheth­er they can be charged for their inaction.”

So, why do I feel it’s essen­tial to tell the story about Kitty Genovese and The New York Times?

The Case for Keeping Online Records

As much as we need journ­al­ists to report the news daily, we need each report to be cor­rectly indexed, archived, and searchable. 

It’s unreas­on­able, of course, to expect all news to be 100% accur­ate. By mak­ing online archives pub­lic, we get anoth­er chance to con­nect the dots of how the media shapes our soci­et­al narratives.

Yes, the New York Times mis­re­por­ted the events in the Kitty Genovese case. However, by allow­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic to search their online archive of old news without doc­tor­ing them in hind­sight, we all get a bet­ter chance of under­stand­ing the world we live in today.

This is where The New York Times should serve as a shin­ing example of provid­ing search­able online archives for many news pub­lish­ers today.

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Psychology in Public Relations

• Logical Fallacies and Cognitive Biases
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Survivorship Bias 
• Theory of Mind: A PR Superpower
• The Amplification Hypothesis
• The Online Brain Hypothesis
• The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon: Heard About It Before?
• The Halo Effect
• The Paradox of Prominence
• Parkinson’s Law & The Law of Triviality (Bike Shed Effect)

Group Psychology

• Social Group Sizes (The Social Brain Hypothesis)
• The Pitfalls of Groupthink
• The Engagement Pyramid
• 150 — Dunbar’s Number
• Seriality (Context Matters)
• Diffusion of Innovations
• The Bystander Effect

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