1. Kitty Genovese Story (From New York Times, March 27th, 1964)
37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police
Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks
Inspector By Martin Gansberg
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.
That was two weeks ago today. But Assistant Chief Inspector Frederick M. Lussen, in charge of the bor­ough’s detectives and a veteran of 25 years of homicide investigations, is still shocked.
He can give a matter-of-fact recitation of many murders. But the Kew Gardens slaying baffles him — not because it is a murder, but because the ‘good people’ failed to call the police.
‘As we have reconstructed the crime,’ he said, ‘the assailant had three chances to kill this woman during a 35-minute period. He returned twice to complete the job. If we had been called when he first attacked, the woman might not be dead now.’

2. ‘He Stabbed Me!’
She got as far as a street light in front of a bookstore before the man grabbed her. She screamed. Lights went on in the 10-storey apartment house at 82—67 Austin Street, which faces the bookstore. Windows slid open and voices punctured the early-morning stillness.
Miss Genovese screamed: ‘Oh, my God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!’
From one of the upper windows in the apartment house, a man called down: ‘Let that girl alone!’
The assailant looked up at him, shrugged and walked down Austin Street toward a white sedan parked a short distance away. Miss Genovese struggled to her feet.
Lights went out. The killer returned to Miss Genovese, now trying to make her way around the side of the building by the parking lot to get to her apart­ment. The assailant grabbed her again.
‘I’m dying!’ she shrieked.

3. A City Bus Passed
Windows were opened again, and lights went on in many apartments. The assailant got into his car and drove away. Miss Genovese staggered to her feet. A city bus, Q-10, the Lefferts Boulevard line to Kennedy International Airport, passed. It was 3.35 am.
The assailant returned. By then, Miss Genovese had crawled to the back of the building where the freshly painted brown doors to the apartment house held out hope of safety. The killer tried the first door; she wasn’t there. At the second door, 82—62 Austin Street, he saw her slumped on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He stabbed her a third time — fatally.
It was 3.50 by the time the police received their first call, from a man who was a neighbor of Miss Genovese. In two minutes they were at the scene. The neighbor, a 70-year-old woman and another woman were the only persons on the street. Nobody else came forward.
The man explained that he had called the police after much deliberation. He had phoned a friend in Nassau County for advice and then he had crossed the roof of the elderly woman to get her to make the call. ‘I didn’t want to get involved,’ he sheepishly told the police.

4. Suspect is Arrested
Six days later, the police arrested Winston Moseley, a 29-year-old business-machine operator, and charged him with the homicide. Mosely had no previous record. He is married, has two children and owns a home at 133—19 Sutter Avenue, South Ozone Park, Queens. On Wednesday, a court committed him to Kings County Hospital for psychiatric observation.
The police stressed how simple it would have been to get in touch with them. ‘A phone call,’ said one of the detectives, ‘would have done it.’
Today witnesses from the neighborhood, which is made up of one-family homes in the $35,000 to $60,000 range with the exception of the two apartment houses near the railroad station, find it difficult to explain why they didn’t call the police.
Lieut. Bernard Jacobs, who handled the investiga­tion by the detectives, said:
‘It is one of the better neighborhoods. There are few reports of crimes. You only get the usual complaints about boys playing or garbage cans being turned over.’
The police said most persons had told them they had been afraid to call, but had given meaningless answers when asked what they had feared.
‘We can understand the reticence of people to become involved in an area of violence,’ Lieutenant Jacobs said, ‘but where they are in their homes, near phones, why should they be afraid to call the police?’

5. He said that his men were able to piece together what happened — and capture the suspect — because the residents furnished all the information when detectives rang doorbells during the days following the slaying.
‘But why didn’t someone call us that night?’ he asked unbelievingly.
Witnesses — some of them unable to believe what they had allowed to happen — told a reporter why.
A housewife, knowingly if quite casual, said, ‘We thought it was a lovers’ quarrel’. A husband and wife both said, ‘Frankly, we were afraid’. They seemed aware of the fact that events might have been different. A distraught woman, wiping her hands in her apron, said, ‘I didn’t want my husband to get involved’.
One couple, now willing to talk about that night, said they heard the first screams. The husband looked thoughtfully at the bookstore where the killer first grabbed Miss Genovese. ‘We went to the window to see what was happening,’ he said, ‘but the light from our bedroom made it difficult to see the street’. The wife, still apprehensive, added: ‘I put out the light and we were able to see better’. Asked why they hadn’t called the police, she shrugged and replied, ‘I don’t know’.

7. Piliavin, Dovidio, Gaertner, and Clark’s (1981) Model of Factors that lead to Emergency Intervention
What factors lead individuals to intervene in emergencies, and what are the causal links among factors?
Features of Situation
Number of other
people present,
Clarity of emergency
Victim
Characteristics
Age, gender, race
Stigmatizing
Conditions,
relatedness
Bystanders Traits
Squeamishness,
Emotionality,
Empathy,
Knowledge
such as CPR
Characteristics of setting, victim and bystander
Arousal
and its
attribution
Perceived
costs and
rewards for
helping
Mediating processes with bystander
Intervention or
Nonintervention
Resulting behavior

8. Some Factors Related to Helping Behavior
Modeling behavior of others
Car on roadside study
Moods [NEGATIVE‑STATE RELIEF MODEL]
Broken camera study
Confession study
Positive moods = more helping (e.g., finding $, pleasant smells)
3) Ability/Expertise
Similarity and Familiarity between helper (s) and victim
Perceived Costs (to helper & victim)
Blood versus no blood on victim
Couple arguing versus two strangers arguing
Being in a hurry
Arousal, attribution and clarity of emergency information

9. Some Factors Related to Helping Behavior (cont.)
Gender (and different types of helping)
9) Past personal experience of helping (e.g., reward vs. punishment)
Physiological reactions to helping
Genetic versus socio-cultural factors (e.g., norm of reciprocity)
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

10. Positive Smells and Helping
No Fragrance
Fragrance
Males
22.2
45.5
Females
16.7
60.9
The findings were mediated by positive affect
* From Baron, R. A. (1997). The sweet smell of … helping: Effects of pleasant ambient fragrance on prosocial behavior in shopping malls. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23,

11. Wrong phone number study
Heterosexual making request
Homosexual making request
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 90
Role of similarity? 70 35 30
Male
Female
From Shaw, Borough, & Fink, 1994

12. Driver gender Officer Gender Male Female
Number of warnings [Gender bias in helping behavior?] Similarity?
Type of crimes: Speeding, DUI, others
Driver gender Officer Gender
Male
Female

13. Piliavin and Piliavin’s Cost Analysis of Emergency Intervention
How do perceived costs for helping and not helping affect our willingness to intervene in an emergency?
Piliavin and Piliavin (1972) proposed that a moderately aroused bystander to an emergency assesses the costs of helping and not helping before deciding whether to intervene. The table below predicts what a bystander is most likely to do in an emergency when the costs for helping are low or high and the costs for not helping are low or high.
Costs (to helper) for Directly Helping Victim
Costs (to victim) if No Direct Help Given
Low
High
Redefinition of the situation, disparagement of victim, etc., which lowers costs for no help, allowing
High
Indirect intervention or
Direct Intervention
Intervention or Nonintervention largely a function of perceived norms in situation
Low
Leaving the scene, ignoring, denial

14. Perceived Costs & Helping
Blood on Victim
No Blood on Victim
Greater levels of helping
Strangers Arguing
Couples Arguing

15. Time Pressure and Helping70 60 50 40 30 20 10
Behind schudle
Ahead of schedule
On schedule
Behind schedule

16. Ambiguous emergency (without screams)
Non-Arousal Placebo
Arousal Placebo
260
240
220
200
180
160
140
120
100 80 60 40
Time Elapsed Before Intervention (Seconds)
Unambiguous
Emergency
(with screams)
Ambiguous emergency (without screams)

17. Misattribution of arousal and speed of helping in ambiguous or unambiguous emergencies
How do attributions of arousal affect our behavior in emergency situations?
In Gaertner and Dovidio’s (1997) experiement, subjects sat in a room and heard what sounded like a stack of chairs falling on a woman in the next room. Sometimes the emergency was unambiguous (the woman screamed), and sometimes it was ambiguous (no scream). Subjects had earlier taken a pill (a placebo); some were told that it might increase their heart rate, and some were not. Gaertner and Dovidio measured how quickly subjects responded to the possible emergency in the next room.
*** As the previous graph shows, subjects responded more slowly to the ambiguous emergency. Furthermore, subjects exposed to the ambiguous emergency responded even less quickly when they could misattribute their arousal to the pill.

18. Attributions & Helping
External attribution (e.g., poor economy is at fault)
Positive emotions
Helping
Helping request (e.g., stranger asking for spare change)
Physiological arousal
Analysis of the situation
Internal attribution (e.g., stranger is lazy)
Negative emotions
No helping

19. Impact of Past Experience on Helping
Thanked for helping
Ask for directions
Give help
“Punished” for helping (“I cannot understand what you’re saying. Never mind, I’ll ask someone else”
Less likely to provide assistance in future

20. Personal benefits for helping others60 50 40 30 20 10
“He who helps others helps himself”
Less aches and pains
“High”
Energetic
Warm
Calm
Self-worth
Source: Luks, 1988.

21. *Source: Whiting & Whiting, 1975
Culture and Helping
Country # Helpful Acts
Philippines
280
Kenya
156
Mexico
148
Japan 97
U.S. 86
India 60
*Source: Whiting & Whiting, 1975

22. “Kindness is it’s own reward.”
Does Altruism Exist?
“Kindness is it’s own reward.”
Egoism: Behaving in one’s own self interest
Altruism: Unselfish concern for others
Helping is a behavior
Egoism and altruism are motivational forces
How can we know?
One assumption:
If altruism exists, the level of costs involved should not impact the
behavior of those helping out

23. % Helping Difficult Escape Easy Escape Low Empathy (Dissimilar Victim)
High Empathy
(Similar Victim) 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10
No difference in helping rates between these 2 conditions
Difficult Escape
Easy Escape
[Have to stay and watch]
[Can leave study]

24. Characteristics of People Choosing to Help
[Assistance to driver after a traffic accident]
High empathy scores
Strong belief in a just world
Greater levels of social responsibility
Internal locus of control scores
Less egocentric (selfish)

25. Sample Altruism Items I have given directions to a stranger.
I have given money to a charity.
I have donated blood.
I have delayed an elevator and held the door open for a stranger.
I have allowed someone to go ahead of me in a lineup (at Xerox machine, in the supermarket).
l have pointed out a clerk's error (in a bank, at the supermarket) in undercharging me for an item.
I have helped a classmate who 1 did not know that well with a homework assignment when my knowledge was greater than his or hers.
I have voluntarily looked after a neighbor's pets or children without being paid for it.
I have helped an acquaintance to move households.
--- From Rushton, Chrisjohn, & Cynthiafekken

26. Sample Locus of Control Items
Do you believe that most problems will solve themselves if you just don't fool with them?
Do you feel that you have a lot of choice in deciding who your friends are?
Most of the time, do you feel that you can change what might happen tomorrow by what you do today?
Do you think that people can get their own way if they just keep trying?
Are some people just born lucky?
Do you believe that if somebody studies hard enough he or she can pass any subject?
Are you often blamed for things that just aren't your fault?

27. Sample Just World items
I am confident that justice always prevails over injustice.
I think basically the world is a just place
I am convinced that, in the long run, people will be compensated for injustices.
I firmly believe that injustices in all areas of life (e.g. professional, family, politics) are the exception rather than the rule.
I believe that, by and large, people get what they deserve
I think that people try to be fair when making important decisions.
From: Dalbert, Montada, & Schmitt, 1987)

28. Helping Models Model Problems Solutions
Moral Individuals are responsible Individuals are responsible
Medical Individuals not responsible Experts responsible
Compensatory Individuals not responsible Individuals are responsible
Enlightenment Individuals are socialized to Higher Power
be responsible

29. Some Issues With Receiving Help
Recipient feeling indebted to the giver (e.g., reciprocity)
Perception of being controlled by the giver
Feeling of inadequacy (lowered self-esteem)
“There are different ways of assassinating a man --- by sword, poison, or moral assassination. They are the same in their results except that the last is the more cruel.” Napolean I, Maxims ( )