Rebecca Steffey

Professor Donegan
25 March 2015
Research Summary 3
To Help or Not To Help
In the reading To help or not to help John Darley and Bibb Latane are psychologists
that examine the case of Kitty Genovese. A woman who was stabbed to death one night outside
of a middle-class neighborhood after just leaving her job. While getting beaten to death no one in
that neighborhood bothered to call 911 or come down to help her. One person screamed to
Stop and one person called 911 after it had already been too late. Darley and Latane were
trying to understand what psychological forces might have been at work that prevented all of
these people to just sit back and not help. Darley and Latane hypothesis that the number of
bystanders in an emergency increases, the greater is the belief that someone else will help and
you dont need too.
The type of method used in this reading is an experimental method. Darley and Latane
put three different groups into a closed up room and the students were asked to explain how they
are adjusting to college life. Group one believed that they were talking to one other person, group
two believed they were talking to two other people, and group three believed they would be
talking to at least five other people. But what they didnt know was that the person they would be
talking to would be a tape recording of someone having a seizure. The independent variable in
this experiment is the amount of students in each group. Whereas the dependent variable is how
the students reacted/their react time. The control group is group one who believes that they are

only talking to one person, whereas the experimental group are the other two groups that
believed they were talking to more than just one person.
The results of the experiment were as Latane and Darley predected. They found that as
the number of others involved in the experiment increased the percentage who did something
about the seizure quickly as it was occurring decreased. But also the delay was also greater when
more bystanders were present for the experiment. For group 1 the average delay in responding
was less than 1 minute, whereas from group 3 it was over the 3 minutes.(Hock, 2013, p.300)
Latane and Darley also go on to explain that all of the participants in group 1 reported the
emergency but only 85% or group 2 and only 60% of group 3 did so at any time. (Hock, 2013,
p.301)
The findings are important to our world, because if more people knew that cases like
Kitty could have been stopped then I think they will be. For example if people knew that
everyone has the same thought process in an emergency then at least someone out of that group
will know to call 911 for help or even come in and help themselves. Instead of just thinking that
someone else will take care of it and they dont have to do anything. Especially the bystander
effect, According to the website Psychology Today the bystander effect is when the presence of
others hinders an individual from intervening in an emergency situation. (Psychology Today,
2002.) Most people wont even bother to help because of this effect. They know there are others
around so they just walk away and do nothing. But if we can raise awareness about Kitty or
about this bystander effect more people would realize that they need to help and step in.
This relates to the information in the book, because in the book it talks about how if a
person is by themselves they are way more likely to stop and help with any type of situation.
Where as in a situation where there would be three or more bystanders people would not stop to

help. They would just keep walking and not even think about it. As well as our Phycology book
says about 38 bystanders were presents at the time of Kittys attack. (Ciccarelli, White, 2013, p.
482)
I can personally relate to this and use it to my knowledge, because I never knew before
how many people dont stop at emergency situations. But now that I know about this experiment
I will most definitely think twice before just moving on and not doing anything about it. This
reading was so interesting to me because the experiment they did just left me so shocked. I
would have never guessed that the number of people would have an effect on their decision to
get help or not. But I will now be that person to help anyone in need if I am ever in an emergency
situation.

Works Cited
Ciccarelli, Saundra & Noland, J White. (2014) Psychology. New Jersey: Pearson
Hock, Roger, R. (2013) Forty Studies That Changed Psychology. Boston, MA: Pearson
Psychology Today (2002-2015) Bystander Effect. Retrieved from
https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bystander-effect