Bystander Apathy

The concept emerged from the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York, after The New York Times reported that 38 witnesses had failed to intervene. Spurred by this case, psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané ran a series of laboratory experiments in 1968, publishing the foundational paper on what they called the bystander effect. They identified three mechanisms — diffusion of responsibility, evaluation apprehension, and pluralistic ignorance — to explain why crowds can produce less help than individuals.