The Bystander Effect

Being a good neighbor is not a suggestion. And we can’t assume someone else will take care of it.

Sixty-some years ago in New York City, a woman returning to her home in Queens in the early hours of the morning was stabbed and raped. Although neighbors heard her screams, no one came to her aid. The gruesome and savage attack gave fresh and disturbing meaning to the words of the late Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.”

The woman’s name was Kitty Genovese, and her neighbors did not care about her. They did not love her. They left her to die like a dog in the street. Newspaper accounts at the time reported that as many as 38 witnesses had left her alone and given her attacker, who had fled after the initial assault, enough time to return and finish the job.

Her death vaulted a hitherto unknown expression into the cultural lexicon: The Bystander Effect. Think of it as the opposite of “The Good Samaritan Effect.” And since then, all 50 states have enacted “Good Samaritan” laws that...