Bystanders are more sympathetic of female victims of physical assault than male victims; dangerous emergencies do not always affect diffusion of responsibility as extant research suggests

Revisiting the gender-relations debate in the violent murder of Kitty Genovese: Another side of gender-bias favoring women in bystander reactions to emergencies. Chima Agazue. Aggression and Violent Behavior, Volume 58, May–June 2021, 101610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2021.101610

Highlights

• Gender does not always affect bystanders' reactions to physical assaults.

• Bystanders are more sympathetic of female victims of physical assault than male victims.

• Dangerous emergencies do not always affect diffusion of responsibility as extant research suggests.

Abstract: The murder of Catherine (Kitty) Genovese in New York in 1964 by Winston Moseley has generated numerous academic publications. One of the major focal points in the debates is the role of gender in bystanders' reactions to violent incidents. Some analysts drew on experiments that found that men did not intervene in incidents involving a man as a perpetrator and a woman as a victim to explain the lack of intervention in the incident by the so-called 38 bystanders falsely reported by The New York Times in 1964. This current article analyzed three videos containing four different assaults that occurred on the busy streets of Argentina, the United States and the United Kingdom to assess whether the gender of the perpetrators and victims affected bystanders' reactions or not. In Incident 1 and Incident 2 involving men as perpetrators with female victims, none of the male and female bystanders physically intervened. In Incident 3 involving a man as a perpetrator and a woman as his victim, both male and female bystanders intervened to save the victim. However, in Incident 4 involving a woman as a perpetrator with a male victim, nobody intervened instead, some of the bystanders laughed at the male victim. The article concludes that whilst gender seemed to have determined intervention in Incident 3 (saving a female victim from a violent man) and its lack in Incident 4 (leaving a male victim to save himself from a violent woman), other factors could be responsible for lack of intervention in Incident 1 and Incident 2 and these include the duration of the assault, the level of violence applied by the perpetrator and bystanders' perception of their own safety. The implications of the bystanders' reactions were highlighted.

Keywords: Kitty GenoveseGenderBystanderInterventionViolencePersonal safety