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Staying Safe on the Mean Streets of Life |
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Others won't always rush to your aid if you are under attack - learn why and what you can do to make others help.
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There are very few things as hard to understand as the senseless murder of a young person. Murder is never easy to come to terms with
but when it is the murder of somebody young, somebody who is just starting to live, it is even harder. In my community we are
struggling with such an event. On December 7, 2002 a 19-year-old girl named Breann Voth was murdered while walking to work.
Her body was found a few hours later on the side of a river. She was face down and nude - she had been assaulted and murdered.
As the story started to unfold it came out that several people had heard her cries for help but had done nothing; they had
not even called 911. Her cries were said to have lasted over 10 minutes and still, nobody so much as called the police. Why?
The answer is a well-documented psychological phenomenon known as the Diffusion of Responsibility. Diffusion of Responsibility
is a part of a bigger phenomenon known as Bystander Apathy. Bystander Apathy and the Diffusion of Responsibility happen when
witnesses to a crime believe that they do not need to act to help because there are so many others around that somebody else
will come to the rescue. It does not mean that these people are heartless and uncaring, it does not mean that they do not
want to help, it just means that they think somebody else will do it so they do not feel as strong an urge to rise to the
occasion. This phenomenon was first studied in 1964 when New York was shocked by the brutal murder of Kitty Genovese in plain
sight of her neighbors.
In the Genovese case the bystanders not only heard the crime as it happened, 38 of them watched as she was assaulted and
beaten to death. The assault lasted half an hour, plenty of time to either intervene or alert the police, and yet at least 38
of Kitty's neighbors did nothing but watch. In answer to this unsettling situation psychologists coined a new theory called
Bystander Apathy. According to the theory Bystander Apathy only occurs in groups and the larger the group the greater the
apathy. The mechanism that fuels the apathy is the Diffusion of Responsibility. It is a phenomenon that people only feel when
they are in a group or when there appears to be somebody of authority (like a police officer, doctor, nurse, firefighter...)
on the scene. They convince themselves that somebody else, somebody more qualified or who has a better understanding of the
situation, will help so they do not have to. It is a very common reaction to an uncommon situation and it has nothing to do
with how good people are, how much empathy they feel or how capable they are of helping.
For more important personal safety strategies see:
Before You Walk Alone in the Dark
Next Page > Beating Bystander Apathy > Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
