The Genovese witnesses-the power of anonymity

The crime
Kitty Genovese was a 28 year old woman, who was stabbed to death by a black person, in 1964, New York. I am not sure how important the color of the criminal is, but it was mentioned in the police report. Most probably you are saying that Kitty was neither the first, nor the last victim to die of stabbing inflicted wounds. I couldn’t agree more.

What is fascinating in Kitty’s story, is that while she was being attacked by Winston Mosely, 38 witnesses were assisting the crime. Normally, those who don’t know the story, are wondering how comes that none out of 38 called the police or the ambulance. As all of them thought that someone else would do that. Eventually, no one did it and Kitty died.

Let us personalize the victim a bit, although tens of books have been written about the subject. Kitty was born in an American Italian family, and her family has moved from Connecticut to New York, after Kitty’s mother has witnessed a crime herself. Some might call this an irony of fate. But we don’t really believe in fatalist determinism, right? We are the masters of our own destiny. So we like to think.

On March the 13th, in a cold spring New York night - cold enough to make people keep their windows shut-, Kitty was on her way home. She was working as a bar manager. Around 3 A.M., Kitty has parked her car, some 30 meters away from her building. Winston - let’s personalize the murderer, too-, attacked her from behind, puncturing her lungs, and thus incapacitating her to scream for a vigorous help. Kitty did manage to shout “Help me, I was stabbed! Help me! Help me!”

Except Robert Mozer, a neighbor that shouted “Leave the girl alone!” no one did another thing. Winston did run away and Kitty managed to crawl near the entrance of her building, in a dark area where she could hardly be heard or seen. Most so-called witnesses believed, later on, that it could have been a drunkard brawl.  What is truly fascinating is that Winston came back after some ten minutes to finish his attack, continuing to stab Kitty. As she was dying, he also raped her. Later he confessed that the only mobile of the crime was sexual assault. He also confessed he was a necrophiliac.
That particular night, Winston has kissed his wife goodbye, and went out hunting for victims. Kitty was his third.

A few years after he was caught and sentenced to life, he assaulted a guard and escaped. Helped only by a baseball bat, he managed to take five hostages and rape the wife of one, under the man’s eyes. You most probably, are asking again, how comes that a single man, armed with only one baseball bat, can take five other adult men hostages and no one did again, a thing?
Long story short, Winston was caught again after two days of manhunt, and imprisoned for life (again). In 1971, he also took part in the Attica prison riots. Eventually, while in prison, he did manage to get a degree in sociology. His parole was denied in 2008, but the next hearing is scheduled for 2011.

The Experiment
As a result of Kitty’s assassination, Bibb Latané and John Darley have done a study which demonstrated the bystander effect (social apathy) and the diffusion of the responsibility. Briefly, the higher the number of witnesses to an incident, the more diffuse the responsibility.
In corporate terms, this can be translated with the 80/20 report, which says that 20% of the people do the work of 80%. Meaning, the more numerous the team, the more they take to finish a task.
The effect of the responsibility diffusion can be counter-acted if the number of the witnesses to an incident decreases. Although, Kitty’s case is mentioned in every Social Psychology textbook, it is not necessarily correct. The sources are mainly biographical and are based on New York Times’ reports which titled two weeks from the crime that “Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police”.

The 1964’s USA
The article was written by Martin Gansberg in 1964. The criminal was black. Only one year before, in 1963, The University of Alabama has refused to enroll black students, and president Kennedy had to send the federal troops to allow the only two black students who had the courage to enroll to enter the premises.
The same year, two black young men, Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were atrociously killed by KKK. They were both 19. One of the killers was a Baptist preacher. But what can we expect from the clergy if God himself allowed his only son to die?
The 60’s USA was not black friendly. Most probably if the killer were white, we would have not heard about such a highly advertised murder. Maybe. But just consider that the same year, other people have been murdered and none has triggered such media frenzy and made social psychologists come up with experiments. Andrew Goodman, Sam Cooke, Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders, Michael Schwerner were all killed in 1964.  Some 93,627 people were arrested in 1964, in New York alone.

The UN by-standers
However, the psychological experiment of Bibb Latané and John Darley, has a truthful core, although it was based on inexact deeds, and the responsibility diffusion effect is still standing.  A viable and present example of such effect is the Rwandan war. In 1994, approximately 800,000 (meaning 20% out of country’s population) of Tutsi citizens haven been murdered by their compatriots, the Hutus while the entire world was helplessly assisting. Let me repeat this again. A quarter of the country’s population was exterminated while the world was watching. A quarter. Was the world indeed helpless?
Romeo Antonius Dallaire, a Canadian general in charge with the UN Peace Keeping Forces in Rwanda was such a helpless (let’s call him a “Genovese”) witness. Although he did ask armed support from the UN HQ, no more than 5000 people, the Security Council of the UN (which is composed of 192 countries out of a 195 existing) refused, mainly due to the USA opposition which became skeptical after the Somalia tragedy.
Deserted mainly by the Belgian UN troops, Dallaire encounters how betrayed and helpless he felt: 'I stood there as the last Hercules left...and I thought that almost exactly fifty years to the day my father and my father-in-law had been fighting in Belgium to free the country from fascism, and there I was, abandoned by Belgian soldiers. So profoundly did I despise them for it...I found it inexcusable.'

What have we learnt?
Not much, sadly. In 2009, lieutenant Mark Gagan from Richmond police, USA, tells that as many as 20 people watched or took part as a 15-year-old California girl was gang raped and beaten for two hours. Police say witnesses took photos. Others laughed. They actually laughed while a girl was being raped and beaten. What is wrong with us?
The bystander effect became the norm. Drew Carberry, a director at the National Council on Crime Prevention explained that if you are in a crowd and you look and see that everyone is doing nothing, then doing nothing becomes the norm. Conformity is validated. After we comply and identify, we internalize the idea as being our own.

Yet, it is not always bad
The responsibility diffusion is not always a bad thing. In a firing squad, one or more of the shooters are randomly offered a gun which contains a blank cartridge instead of a real bullet. This permits the members of the quad to think that he did not fire a fatal shot, and consequently he is not a criminal without will. Same multiple option goes for the electric chairs, which have several switches, but only one is connected.
Such responsibility diffusion works out not only for the “responsibility assuming” but also for the “responsibility non-assuming” and it is benefic for the psychological balance of those involved.

"It was not my fault" is a bad excuse
Consequently, the diffusion of responsibility was used as a legal defense by many of the Nazis being tried at Nuremberg and later the perpetrators of the My Lai massacre. “I only followed orders. There was nothing I could do” was the main excuse. That is not entirely true.
Claus von Stauffenberg did something.
So did Paul Rusesabagina
And Oskar Schindler.
And Lance Orton.
And John Busch.
And Joe Darby.
And Wesley Autrey.
I know. You never heard about them. Schindler maybe, as Steven Spielberg did a Hollywood blockbuster movie based on his story.

What can we do?
How justified is our helplessness and non-involvement? Evolutionary speaking, it is less probably to assume the responsibility for someone else’s deeds, except my own. The “It is not my business, why should I interfere” has a solid motivation, even if it is dastardly.

Our mothers’ advice “stay safe” is justified. Although it is pro-socially desirable and ego flattering, heroism is against the socio-biological dictate which tells me that my basic purpose is to stay alive, while a heroic intervention might jeopardize my life. Heroes with supernatural powers are not good examples. A good hero must be an ordinary person who does something extraordinary in certain circumstances, as Zimbardo pointed out. However, we are not born to be heroes. The altruist impulse might justify a potential status increase – heroes always marry the beautiful girl with whom they have more daughters (so claims Kanazawa). Everybody loves them, as they do things we would not personally do. Watching the heroism of others is part of escapism. We sort of envy them, but we would not want to be them. It is like going to the movies. Being a hero is demanding, risky and highly unappreciated. Batman and Robin Hood were proscribes. A post-mortem increased status might only help my heirs, if any.
Let’s make a rapid calculation based on an example. I am a woman, and I witness a crime. It is my moment of heroism. What do I do? I estimate my forces and I conclude that me alone, unarmed, I cannot –in spite of my altruistic desire to help- face the aggressor. Therefore, I call the police and helplessly assist the crime or even flee. By the time the police arrive, the crime would have been done. The hero in me is calculated and selfish and cannot surface. I can choose to interfere and eventually get myself and the victim killed in the process or I can assist and live with the guilt. Zimbardo- the author of the failed and atrocious Stanford Experiment- advised that we should teach our children to fight inactivity and let the heroes inside them surface. Based on what Zimbardo says, I should teach my 4 year old daughter, that when she sees a man with a knife attacking another person, she should interfere. This could be a death sentence for my child. Yet, how can we combat and shed social apathy? Can we? The good news is yes, we can, but not how Zimbardo proposed. Social apathy is shed the moment we realize that whatever we lose is lesser than what we gain. And sometimes, life is not our major loss.
So what stops me? Maybe fear, which is a healthy desiderate of preservation of species. The organic law dictates to fight or flight. And you might not be able to fight. What is it to be done? In the animal environment, a gazelle would never interfere to help another gazelle escape from the lion’s claws. Not even the gazelle’s own mother. But we are not gazelles; we are human beings with an elevated moral sense, conscience and altruism. Are we? How many of us would, statistically speaking would interfere, if they witnessed a crime? No, 99% is too optimistic. Let’s try again. Yes, only 31%. Meaning a not so holy trinity.  So, atheist or not, pray that in case of an attack, in the middle of a crowd, you are not amongst victims. The statistics claim that there are only 31% chances to be helped if there are more than four witnesses of the incident.

The irrationality of the Good Samaritan Law
There are some countries that try to fight social apathy within the legal frame (The Law of Good Samaritan), where it becomes mandatory to help a victim otherwise it is considered tacit consent. But, how moral are we if we legislate altruism and we threaten with imprisonment or fine if we don’t help? Doesn’t this Law defy the foundation of altruism itself, which claims to we should perform acts of kindness unconditionally and out of moral impulse? Why none of those 38 witnesses of Kitty Genovese’s murder did interfere? The same reason 192 countries did not interfere in the Rwandan genocide. Shame on us.

Some say the anonymity is to be blamed in such cases. This is why criminals use masks during burglaries, crimes or riots. No face, no name- everything is allowed. However, the big cities come with another sort of mask: social anonymity. The bigger the city, the wider the degree of liberty and the higher the anonymity. Anonymity gives birth to monsters and heroes alike. And in between monsters and heroes, are the faceless and nameless inert spectators, simple social numbers and corporate robots who live in the shadow of non-implication.