After reading the story about Kitty Genovese I was reminded of an experience I had some time ago that I have never understood until now.
About 2 years ago I was sleeping at my boyfriends house when at 4am I was woken by a girl screaming "help he's trying to rape me!". My boyfriend lives across the road from a small shopping center with a lot of open spaces and the voice was so loud I thought the girl must have been quite close so I woke up my boyfriend and told him to go help her. He got up and woke his dad and they both ran towards the voice. Meanwhile my boyfriends mum and I got up to phone the police whilst the girl continued to cry out for help. My boyfriend and his dad shortly returned and said they were unable to help the girl because she was in one of the apartments in a large block of apartments that is at least 500 meters from the house.
Interestingly, the police said that we were the first people to call! This amazes me because the girl was in a large apartment building and if she was loud enough to wake me up when I was so far away surely her neighbors were woken up to but none of them called the police! Also there was a group of guys waiting to start work outside the shops and none of them did anything either!
Until studying social psych I could never understand how so many people could ignore a girl screaming that she was in danger and needed help. I now understand that people are less likely to help when there are others around that could help than when they are alone. It seems to me that the people in the apartment building experienced a diffusion of responsibility where they did not feel responsible for providing assistance because of the presence of other people.
It's an interesting but ugly part of human nature. It would be nice to know that you could rely on other people if you desperately needed help no matter what the situation was or how many people were around...
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2 comments:
Jaimee,
This story made me think of a few experiences I have had. In saying this I am trying to look at things from another angle (perhaps the neighbours in your story).
In my teenage years I lived in a caravan out the back of my parents place. Over the back fence was a govvie house occupied by a couple that didn't work. Every night they would scream at each other, sometimes until dawn. Some of the things said were absolutely crude and disgusting and made my stomach churn. Looking back now, I would suspect that drugs and/ or alcohol played a large part in their lives.
Anyway, my reaction was to be completly turned off by their constant yelling. This made me angry and I often went to sleep with ear plugs or music on so I could escape from their constant bickering.
My reaction to their nightly ritual of abuse was to stereotype them as derelicts of society. I now realise that I was categorizing them as outgroup members who were not associated with my social world. This made it harder for me to view them as individual and unique people who obviously needed help. I heard some terrible things said but my likelihood of reacting was reduced due to my de-sensitization to their nightly ritual. I look back now and realise how immature and naive I was at this time.
I like to think I would have reacted if things appeared to get out of hand but things were black and white to me back then. They were 'bad people' which made it less likely for me to be responsive to their antics.
In saying this their is no excuse for the lack of support highlighted in your story. I am just trying to understand what could lead someone to not respond in a situation like this. Styereotypes and social categorization could have had a role to play if the people involved had a history of antisocial behaviour leading to alienation and withdrawal from their direct neighbours.
Anyway, enough procrastinating over the exam, time to hook into some study!
Keith.
Jaimee,
I think your story of the screaming girl is a sad reflection of the times we currently live in. Not only is there a very low level of altruisitc tendencies within society as a whole, a lot of people are just plain scared to help someone they don't know incase something happens to them. It also boils down to the "someone else will call the cops" mentality. Sadly it appears if things are only set to get worse too :(
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