Background and Aim: After Kitty Genovese’s murder in New York, Darley and Latané (1968) and Latané and Rodin (1969) conducted a series of experiments that introduced the theory of “bystander apathy” because of the “diffusion of responsibility”. In other words, a negative event, such as a public attack on a person or a person falling ill on the street and collapsing and needing help, was less likely to result in such help being given if there were many witnesses than if there were few. In fact the fewer the witnesses, the more help was given. If many people saw an attack, for example, each one was likely to believe that others had already called for help, were assisting, or had decided it was not an emergency situation. Anyway, the result was the same: inaction.

Method: The emergencies were staged in the short 7.5 min journey between two stations on the New York subway (underground). These were trains that did not stop at the stations in between. On each trial four researchers (two males and two females) entered the train. Four different research teams gathered data from 103 trails. The procedure was always the same: The female confederates took seats and kept notes as unobtrusively as possible, while the male “victim” and male model (potential “helper”) stood near a pole in the centre of the train.

The four victims were male, three white and one black, aged between 26 and 35 years, all identically casually dressed. In 38 trials the victim smelled of alcohol and carried alcohol in a brown bag; in 65 trials he appeared sober and carried a cane. All victims participated in both conditions. The models were all white and aged between 24 and 29.