A young woman’s murder in 1964 before 38 witnesses still evokes the disconnect between what we believe about ourselves and how we really act under pressure

More than half a century later, the death of Kitty Genovese continues to remind us of the disconnect between what we believe about ourselves and how we really act under pressure.

The murder of the 28-year-old outside her apartment in the Queens neighborhood of Kew Gardens in the early morning of 13 March 1964 rippled through New York City and around the world. How could a young, independent woman who lived on her own terms be so easily struck down? How could so many neighbors look on and turn away as she was stabbed repeatedly on the street and in her apartment building? What did that collective inability to act reveal about ourselves, our communities, and our belief systems?

Genovese’s killer, Winston Moseley, died in prison this week, bringing the case and its implications back into the spotlight. The murder forced us, more than any prior case, to confront our own apathy, and spurred a series of studies that ferreted out the causes of what became known as the “bystander effect”. The man responsible for vaulting Kitty Genovese from murder victim to cultural symbol of indifference is longtime New York Times newsman (and eventual executive editor) AM Rosenthal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Winston Moseley laughingly tells media he regrets only being caught after his capture in a suburban Grand Island apartment house. Photograph: Corbis

Two weeks after her murder, Rosenthal assigned a story with the damning headline: “Thirty-Seven Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call Police.” The number (which was off by one, as the story itself detailed 38 witnesses) quickly became a sensation – but it turned out, like so much about the story, to be wrong. As detailed in Kevin Cook’s 2014 book about the case, a single observer witnessed Genovese’s attack. A separate witness cried, “Leave the girl alone!” and spooked that killer away until he, astonishingly, returned to finish what he started. The police were called.

The truth of what happened the night Genovese died may not have lined up with the New York Times’ reporting, but whether the number of witnesses was 38 or 1, the effect of the case on our understanding of human behavior remains. The notion of the bystander effect, and why we continue to look away in the face of danger, remains a dangerous and callous reality.

The bystander effect, and why we continue to look away in the face of danger, remains a dangerous and callous reality

Take the story of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax. In early 2010, Yax, a Guatemalan immigrant who had become homeless, witnessed a woman being attacked by a knife-wielding assailant in Jamaica, Queens, less than three miles away from Kew Gardens. He stepped in and saved the woman, but not before being stabbed multiple times himself.

For more than an hour he lay dying in a pool of his own blood as dozens walked by. Some paused to stare, others leaned in close. One even shook his body and then left, while someone else recorded a video of the entire proceeding. Four 911 calls were recorded, but by the time firefighters finally arrived on the scene, Tale-Yax was dead. (It is not clear whether his killer was ever found, or that the woman he saved was ever publicly identified.)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest James Bulger, murdered in 1993 by two 10-year-old boys. He was abducted from a Liverpool shopping centre. Photograph: Taken from picture library

The UK reckoned with its own bystander horror as a result of the heinous 1993 death of two-year-old James Bulger at the hands of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both only 10 years old at the time. Video evidence showed them lead James away from the mall as dozens watched. In an odd coincidence, later testimony cemented the number of bystanders to James’s kidnapping at 38.

More recent examples of the bystander effect further illustrate the scope of the problem. A two-year-old child was run over twice in Foshan, China, as far too many watched and did nothing. A man drowned off the coast of Alameda, California, as dozens elected not to go in and save him. A woman waited in the ER in a Brooklyn hospital, and collapsed from her ailment, ignored by other patients and security guards until she died. All these witnesses became inhibited and indecisive, sloughing off responsibility to another with automatic passivity.

Recognizing the wrongness of the behavior is important, but doing something to counteract the insidiousness of the bystander effect remains stubbornly difficult. So we continue to look away, no matter how horrible the crime, even if we know better.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Street where Kitty Genovese was murdered in Kew Gardens, Queens in New York City. Photograph: NY Daily News via Getty Images

We know about the bystander effect because of the work of John Darley and Bibb Latane, two social psychology researchers who published a series of papers beginning in 1969. They wanted to show why the witnesses to Genovese’s murder, a case both followed avidly, behaved with such apathy, and whether they could quantify a minimum number of people present to create collective indecision.



One experiment, seen in this early 1970s video, first shows a single person sitting alone in a room filling with smoke, and then repeats the same scenario with three people present. The lone witness leaves the room to ask for help. The group sits around furtively, seemingly unable to respond.

That experiment, as well as different versions featuring responses to a man having a seizure, pinpointed the bystander effect: that the more people who witness a catastrophic event, the less likely any one person will do anything because each thinks someone else will take responsibility.

Subsequent experiments by both men and other researchers over the intervening decades suggest that in a crisis, pointing at a bystander and giving her directions to ask help or complete a task can override the pernicious effect. Action over apathy is the greater struggle and more difficult choice, but it does sometimes prevail.

“We want to explode one particular view that people have: ‘Were I in that situation, I would behave in an altruistic, wonderful way,’” Darley said in a 2006 interview. “What I say is, ‘No, you’re misreading what’s happening. I want to teach you about the pressures [that can cause bystander behavior]. Then when you feel those pressures, I want that to be a cue that you might be getting things wrong.’”

Darley likely didn’t think of it, but what he described in his interview matched the way Winston Moseley was caught. A bystander observed him burgling a house and leaving with a television set. That witness called the police, who apprehended Moseley and soon realized the extent of the terrible crimes he’d committed.

Still, knowing something intellectually and doing something under pressure are two different, often opposing states. Much as we’d love for reason and emotion to work together, they seem to diverge and hamper good decision-making.

We’d like to think, upon hearing terror-filled screams deep in the night outside our apartment windows that we would do the right thing and call for help. But we can’t know that for sure. That frisson of uncertainty ought to haunt any decent human being.

• This article was amended on 11 April 2014 to correct James Bulger’s first name from Jamie, in line with the Guardian style guide.