Next Monday I’ll be the presenter in my doctoral seminar class. This semester the doc sem is on classic studies in psychology and education. The students, 9 of us, were given a list of topics to choose from and I chose Bystander Effect.

I came across this issue back in Malaysia when I borrowed this book titled “40 studies that changed psychology” from the UM library. I have yet to prepare for the presentation but here’s the gist of it:

Many years ago in NY, a woman by the name of Kitty Genovese was murdered on the street somewhere near her own apartment. The man took over 30 minutes to assault, rape and finally kill Kitty. This would not have been an exceptional crime in NY except that there were 38 witnesses to the crime and none of them did anything to help Kitty.

I chose this topic because I find it intriquing. I think since the time I read about this I’ve always reminded myself that I shouldn’t be a bystander and in any emergency I should be the first to take action. But things are not as simple as that. Well when I’ve finally read all the assigned articles and finished my powerpoint slides, I’ll do a summary here.