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Originally Posted by alansmithee
This is a well-documented phenomena. People tend to stay out of situations like this. In the '70's there was a big case in NYC where a woman was repeatedly stabbed to death in an apartment complex while people watched and didn't call any police.
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Kitty Genovese, in 1964. 38 different witnesses saw her repeatedly beaten and stabbed, in separate attacks, yet nobody called the police for 35 minutes. During that time, the attacker left the scene, then came back to finish killing her. The police were on scene 3 minutes after the call. Had any of the witnesses called the police in the first few minutes of the incident, she would have survived.
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I can't remember enough of my psych classes to remember what the technical terms and motives for this type of behavior are (maybe someone who knows more in the field could explain) but it is accepted fact. Chances are, you wouldn't have stopped, and according to many tests, the fact that you were even bothering to call the police is more than what many people would do. As the number of people in a situation seem to rise, more an more people will rely on someone else to handle the situation.
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The Bystander Effect and Diffusion of Responsibility.
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One dynamic brought forth was the Bystander Effect. This theory speculates that as the “number of bystanders increases, the likelihood of any one bystander helping another decreases.” As a result, additional time will pass before anyone seeks outside help for a person in distress. Another hypothesis is something called the Diffusion of Responsibility. This is simply a decrease in the feeling of personal responsibility one feels when in the presence of many other people. The greater the number of bystanders, the less responsibility the individual feels. In cases where there are many people present during an emergency, it becomes much more likely that any one individual will simply do nothing.
In essence, the 38 witnesses felt no responsibility to act because there were so many witnesses. Each one felt that the other witness would do something. Social psychology research supports the notion that Catherine Genovese had a better chance of survival if she had been attacked in the presence of just one witness.
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Would I have stopped under such circumstances as described in the OP? Hell no, it would have just provided the attackers with another victim. I would, however, have called 911. That's why the service exists in the first place. Next time, don't hesitate. Call 911 and tell the dispatcher what's going on; if it turns out that the girl isn't harmed by the men, no harm has been done. It's better to play it safe in such a situation.
Gilda