Latane & Darley - bystander effect Flashcards
Lecture 18 (15 cards)
Background - Latane
- Director of institute for research in social sciences
- Appointed as chair of psychology
- Director of the centre for human science
Background - Kitty Genovese murder case
- 13th March 1964 - Kitty Genovese stalked and murdered by Winston Mosely in NYC
- 23rd March 1964 - Police commissioner claims that 38 witnesses had reduced to intervene
- NYT article - “for more than half an hour 38 respectable, law abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens. Twice the sound of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him and frightened him off. Each time he returned, sought her out and stabbed her again. Not one person telephoned the police during the assault: one witness called after the woman was dead.”
- Lead to public outcry and debate about the breakdown of moral and social values
- Popular hypothesis - living conditions in the city divide people and undermine their capacity to empathise with the lives of others
- Darley’s response - how are all people the same and how might anybody in that situation be influenced not to respond
- Latane and Darley devised a 5 step cognitive model and a set of experiments to test the model
Background - five step model
In order to respond to an emergency, you need to:
1. Notice that something is happening
2. Interpret the event as an emergency
3. Take responsibility for providing help
4. Decide how to act
5. Provide help
background - bystander hypothesis
- Latane and Darley suggest an inverse relationship between the number of bystanders and the likelihood of emergency helping
- More bystanders less emergency help
- Pluralistic ignorance
- Diffusion of responsibility
background - pluralistic ignorance
- The presence of other people who remain inactive or seem unconcerned during an event can dissuade or discourage an individual from intervention, even though they might have felt concerned by the situation
- A norm of inactivity is established
- So step 2 of the 5 step modelb
background - diffusion of responsibility
As the number of other people present in a given situation increases, the responsibility that a given individual feels for responding to that situation is correspondingly diminished - we expect someone else to take on responsibility
The study - white smoke experiment
- Method - N = 58 male Columbia University undergraduates
cover story was problems involved in life at an urban university, asked to sit in a waiting room and fill in a survey, room fills with smoke - IV - group size (participant alone or with two others), others are confeerated who do not react
- DV - behavioural response to emergency, did the participants leave the room to report the smoke, how long did it take
- results - more interventions when alone, less with two more participants, less with two confederates
the study - seizure experiment
1.Method - N=72 New York university undergraduate psychology students
2. Cover story - discussion about personal problems of students while at uni, seated in one of several small room to retain anonymity, can hear other discussants through headphone and communicate via intercom, one discussant admits to being prone to seizures and expresses distress
3. IV - group size, 1 2 or 6 others
4. DV - behavioural response to emergency, did P leave room and report, how long did it take
5. results - more interventions alone, less with 1 more, even less with 4 more
6. faster when alone, slower with one, even slower with 4
debate and controversy - Kitty Genovese revisited
- Court proceedings suggest far fewer witnesses and only 3 people who saw Moseley and Genovese together
- Most only heard commotion
- Only the first attack could have been witnessed
- Moseley was driven away by shouting after first attack, but did not believe anyone would directly intervene
debate and controversy - culturally embedded theorising
Criticism - researchers have failed to translate this gender aspect of the Kitty Genovese case into their experiments, in the 60s domestic violence and violence towards women were not discussed
debate and controversy - CCTV studies
- Criticism - Latane and Darley studies do not examine violent situations as in the Kitty Genovese case
- Follow up studies - use of CCTV footage that the police collected on violent incidents in public settings
- Key findings - number of bystanders correlates with more conciliatory behaviour, sequence of events is important - when a single bystander intervened 3 or more time the behaviour became more escalatory, when several bystanders intervene events became less violent
debate and controversy - social identity of bystander
- Criticism - Latane and Darley studies do not examine the relationship between victim, bystanders and perpetrators
- CCTV studies - bystanders are much more likely to intervene if they appear to know the victim before the incident
- Experiment - participant encounter a person who is lying on the floor and appears to have hurt their leg, injured wears football shirt of in group, rival club or unbranded, more likely to help with ingroup
impact and legacy - meta analysis
- 4 reasons why studies generated so much interest - mundane realism, experimental realism, theoretical framework, counterintuitive and powerful phenomenon
- Meta analysis showed effect stronger when non dangerous rather than dangerous, perpetrator not present rather than present, non physical costs rather than physical costs
- More support provided if bystanders all male, and were not strangers
impact and legacy - bystander and ally trainings
- Many interventions include a component on how to encourage bystanders to get involved
- However, the group is often conceptualised as an inhibitor rather than a resource
- Interventions that draw on shared identity and shared norms appear to be successful
impact and legacy - beyond emergency help
- Charitable giving
- Collective action
- Witnesses to a crime
- Whistleblowers
- International aid
