On the 13th of March 1964 at about 3.30 a.m. in the Kew Gardens district of New York City,

Kitty Genovese was stabbed, raped and murdered by Winston Moseley.

At the same time, 38 respectable, law-abiding citizens watched the killer stalk and stab

Kitty in three separate attacks.

Twice the sounds of their voices and the sudden glow of their bedroom lights interrupted him

and frightened him off.

Each time, he returned, soaked her out, and stabbed her again.

Not one person telephoned the police during the assault, and the only one witness, called

after the moment was already dead.

The people of Latane are not convinced by this statement.

They believed that the willingness of an individual to help in an emergency situation

depends on the number of people present in this situation.

They believe that the distribution of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance

represent the causes for low-level assistance in cases like Genovese.

Under the distribution of responsibility, it is understood that people in an emergency situation feel less need for action,

as there are other people who could take responsibility for the action.

Pluralistic ignorance describes the process in which people present in an emergency

pay attention to how other people react to a sudden and unexpected event.

As no one reacts immediately, everyone observes that the other spectators do not react

and interprets their inactivity as a sign that the result is not significant and therefore no reaction is necessary.

The consequence of both phenomena is that the person who is in an emergency situation is not helped.

Later, Darley and Lattané defined this as a spectator effect, also called bystander effect.

This indicates that the probability of a help for people who are in an emergency situation

is different from the number of people in this situation.

The bystander effect was later expanded to other phenomena.

For phenomena of responsibility diffusion and pluralistic ignorance,

Darley and Lattané designed two experiments, the attack and the white smoke experiment.

In the so-called attack experiment, the responsibility diffusion was examined.

Here, a victim was deceiving an epileptic attack form via headphones.

It was either no, one or four other persons, in addition to the test subject and victim, turned on.

The help was measured, i.e. the report of the incident against the test subject and the duration of the help.

It was to be observed that the help was taken away with increasing number of other persons,

while the duration of the help was increased significantly.

But how does it relate to the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance?

This was examined in the white smoke experiment.

There the test subjects were either alone, with two

unconscious persons, or in the presence of two possessed persons,

were lower.

These results of the two experiments thus support both the

phenomenon of the distribution of responsibility and the phenomenon of

pluralistic ignorance.

Also in later replications, these phenomena show an excellent robustness

compared to falsification attempts.

Despite these findings, researchers fail to increase the willingness to help

in an emergency situation.

But how can that be?

The answer can probably be found in the case of Genovese itself.

Now the truth about the Genovese case.

Wait a minute, the truth?

Yes, exactly.