Bystander Social Influence

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Pages: 2

Chapter Fifteen of the textbook discussed social psychology and how our behaviors are impacted by social influences (Licht, 2014). An interesting phenomenon is the bystander effect. According to Licht, “when a person is in trouble, bystanders have the tendency to assume (and perhaps wish) that someone else will help – and therefore they stand by and do nothing” (650). An example of the bystander effect is the murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese. On March 13, 1964, around 3:15 A.M., Catherine returned home from her day at work to her apartment in Queens, New York (Licht, 2014). She was then stabbed “by a man later identified as Winston Moseley” (Cherry, 2016). Catherine repeatedly called for help, but nobody came to her rescue. It was not