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Genovese syndrome: what it is and how it affects Social Psychology

Genovese syndrome: what it is and how it affects Social Psychology

March 1, 2024

The "Genovese Syndrome", also known as the Spectator Effect, is a concept that has served to explain the psychological phenomenon by which a person is immobilized at the time of witnessing an emergency situation where he would be expected to provide support to someone who runs a major danger

In this article we will see what is the Genovese Syndrome , why it has been called in this way and what has been its importance, both in psychology and in the media.

  • Related article: "What is Social Psychology?"

Kitty Genovese and the spectator effect

Catherine Susan Genovese, better known as Kitty Genovese, was an American woman of Italian descent who grew up in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. He was born on July 7, 1935, his family moved to Connecticut, and worked as a restaurant manager.


Little more we can say about his life. What we do know, since it has generated every series of a hypothesis within social psychology, is how it died. The early morning of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was killed while trying to enter her building , located in the city of New York.

According to the official version, the man who murdered her followed her from her car to the building portal, where he stabbed her. Kitty He tried to avoid it and shouted for help for more than 30 minutes , while the murderer continued with the aggressions and even raped her before killing her. What happened in the course of those minutes is what has been called the Genovese Syndrome: none of the neighbors tried to help her.


The prestigious New York Times spread the news, by the journalist Martin Gansberg. Some time later the subject was compiled in a book whose author was the editor of the same newspaper, A.M. Rosenthal, entitled "38 witnesses." Among the facts narrated, the New York Times said that, in total, 38 neighbors had witnessed the murder, and none of them had bothered to give notice to the authorities .

For many years this version was taken as the true one, and it gave rise to different psychological studies on why people are immobilized or become indifferent to the emergency of others. These studies subsequently had an impact on scientific research on the inhibition of behavior during individual emergencies when living within a group.

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Intervention in emergency situations: the Darley and Latané experiment

The pioneering experiment on this phenomenon was conducted by John M. Darley and Bibb Latané, and published in the year of 1968. The researchers hypothesized that the people who witnessed the murder did not help precisely because they were many people. Through their research, they suggested that when participants were individual witnesses of an emergency, they were more likely to help. While, when an emergency was present in a group manner, the participants were less likely to intervene individually.


They explained that people they became individually indifferent to the emergency when they were in groups , because they assumed that someone else would react or have already helped (precisely because it was an urgent situation).

In other words, the researchers came to the conclusion that the number of people who witness an attack is a determining factor in the individual intervention. The latter was called "Spectator Effect".

Likewise, in other experiments it was developed the notion of spreading responsibility , through which it is explained that the presence of different observers inhibits the response of a spectator when he is alone.

Media impact of Genovese Syndrome

What has recently become problematized about the Kitty Genovese case is the New York Times' own version of the circumstances in which the murder occurred. Not only has this been problematized, but the media and pedagogical impact that version had . The news about the murder of Kitty Genovese generated scientific hypotheses that were embodied in study manuals and school textbooks of psychology, configuring a whole theory about prosocial behaviors.

More recent versions of the New York Times report that some facts have been misinterpreted, and that the initial news may have fallen into different biases. The main criticism has been to have exaggerated the number of witnesses . Recently it has been questioned that there have actually been a total of 38 people witnessing the murder.

Later journalistic investigations speak of the presence only 12 people, who probably did not witness the complete attack, since the latter had different phases and locations before arriving at the murder in the portal. Likewise, the number of aggressions originally proposed by the New York Times has been questioned.

Not only that, but recent testimonies talk about that at least two neighbors did call the police ; putting in tension so much the investigations realized decades ago by the American newspaper, like the inactivity of the authorities before a crime that could be justified easily as "passionate". Ultimately, and within social psychology, the variables and the theoretical approach that has traditionally supported the Spectator Effect have been problematized.

Bibliographic references:

  • Dunlap, D. (2016). 1964 | How Many Witnessed the Murder of Kitty Genovese ?. New York Times Retrieved July 3, 2018. Available at //www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/insider/1964-how-many-witnessed-the-murder-of-kitty-genovese.html.
  • Darley, J. M. & Latane, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8 (4, pt.1): 377-383. Summary Retrieved July 3, 2018. Available at //psycnet.apa.org/record/1968-08862-001.
  • IS + D. communication (2012). Psychosocial experiments - No. 7: The diffusion of responsibility (Darley and Latané, 1968). Retrieved July 3, 2018. Available at //isdfundacion.org/2012/12/28/experimentos-psicosociales-nº-7-la-difusion-de-la-responsabilidad-darley-y-latane/.

SHOCKING! - Bystander Effect | Kitty Genovese | Social Psychology (March 2024).


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