Bystander apathy – The daily blog of behavioral and cognitive economics

The Volunteer’s Dilemma

On March 27, 1964, a New York Times headline proclaimed, “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police,” with the subheading, “Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector.” “For more than half an hour,” the article began, “38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.” The story about the New Yorkers who “didn’t want to get involved” as they heard the blood-curdling screams of Kitty Genovese became a parable of the callousness and alienation of modern urban life. It was soon amplified by an article in Life magazine titled “The Dying Girl That No One Helped” and a book by the New York Times editor A. M. Rosenthal called Thirty-Eight Witnesses. ….[READ]