Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexMack
When haven't college students been seen as party animals? Did I miss something? And uh, hi, crowd of over 100 and only he could figure out that a guy floating facedown in the water wasn't quite right?
The EMT in me is just stunned that no one else could be bothered to act at all. And annoyed. If the article is accurate.
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As an EMT, I am sure you must have seen situations that no one did a thing.
Several years ago, a woman was killed, murdered with over 20 people just about looking on. No one called the police. No one said a thing.
This was in NYC.
Woman's name was, IIRC, Kitty Genovese.
I was right, for a change:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese
The
bystander effect (also known as
bystander apathy,
Genovese syndrome,
diffused responsibility or
bystander intervention) is a
psychological phenomenon in which someone is less likely to intervene in an emergency situation when other people are present and able to help than when he or she is alone.
Solitary individuals will typically intervene if another person is in need of help: this is known as bystander intervention. However, researchers were surprised to find that help is less likely to be given if more people are present. In some situations, a large group of bystanders may fail to help a person who obviously needs help. An example which shocked many people is the
Kitty Genovese case. Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in
1964 by a serial rapist and murderer. The murder took place over a period of about a half hour, after which it was reported that dozens of alleged "witnesses" failed to help the victim. For this reason, the name
Genovese syndrome or
Genovese effect was used to describe the phenomenon at the time. In 1972, Dr.
Wolfgang Friedmann, professor of law at
Columbia University, was murdered in broad daylight and bled to death on the sidewalk. The death of
Deletha Word near
Detroit in
1995 after witnesses failed to thwart her attackers, as well as the
James Bulger murder case, may have been other well-publicized cases of the effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect