Defusing the Diffusion of Responsibility Principle: A Re-Examination of the Bystander Effect
By Julia Sebastien
*Trigger Warning: This blog post addresses a historic crime of a violent and sexual nature.
Following the rape/murder of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964, which began in plain view of her Queens apartment, psychologists scrambled to make sense of what had transpired; how could 38 citizens, who witnessed this highly visible, audible, and preventable horror from their apartment room windows, do absolutely nothing but watch? Researchers Darley and Latané (1968) provided one explanation: a “diffusion of responsibility.”
A diffusion of responsibility occurs when the presence of multiple bystanders reduces the perceived responsibility each individual witness feels to take action. Each witness’ perceived responsibility is reduced because each assumes someone else will surely act. To support their hypothesis, Darley and Latané (1968) conducted a series of studies demonstrating that as the number of witnesses to a staged crisis increased, the longer it took for any one person to intervene. Despite the dominance of Darley and Latané’s theory, also dubbed the bystander effect, it seems an unsatisfactory explanation for how and why some 38 people passively witnessed a brutal crime lasting half an hour while ignoring Genovese’s cries for help (Lemann, 2014). This post thus posits that the freeze response, derealization, and cognitive dissonance are more plausible explanations for these witnesses’ prolonged inaction.
Ever since supposedly regular citizens showed themselves capable of participating in atrocities such as the Holocaust, social psychologists studied when and how assumedly average people could be pressured into behaving incongruently to their attitudes and morals, such as when conforming to or obeying others (Asch, 1956; Milgram, 1963). Haney et al.’s (1973) infamous Stanford prison experiment highlighted social identity theory: one’s own identity, behavior, and sense of morality can become supplanted by those belonging to the role one adopts; in Haney et al.’s study, participants’ behavior detached from their own morals and aligned instead with their new role of either abusive guard or acquiescent prisoner. Inextricably linked with this theory of social identity is Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance: when a person’s public behavior does not accord with their private belief, a tension arises, driving the person to change their private belief—usually not their public behavior—until both are in agreement. The moral incongruency of their abusive behavior thus would have driven Haney et al.’s “guards” to align themselves with their roles even more fiercely to justify their actions and to escape any psychological tension resultant from confronting it.
Darley and Latané’s (1968) assertion that witnesses made the rational and cogent, though incorrect, assumption that another witness would surely take action seems an ill-fitting explanation for the prolonged inertia of Genovese’s witnesses, who remained frozen, transfixed by the scene unfolding below, beyond the point at which it would have become apparent that no help had been summoned. Darley and Latané’s (1968) theory of bystander apathy also does not satisfactorily cover other possible causes of witnesses’ inaction. First, apartment dwellers cannot easily see other bystanders nearby to the victim, a critical factor of the diffusion of responsibility: though Genovese’s witnesses were likely aware that there must have been other witnesses, they likely could neither see nor interact with each other to confirm whether anyone had sent for help, or, equally critically, whether their evaluation of the danger was even accurate. What if, rather than the diffusion of responsibility, witnesses’ immobility resulted from a primal instinct characterized by fear and an indecisive tie between approach and avoid motivations: the freeze response (Kozlowska et al., 2015)?
Rather than an approach or avoidance motivation like with fight or flight, the freeze response begets tonic immobility (Kozlowska et al., 2015). While animals (e.g., deer) also freeze, people can enter a freeze state while experiencing trauma, as might have Genovese’s witnesses. Research by Graziano and Habashi (2010, 2015) supports that in an emergency, both the evolutionarily preserved fight and flight mechanisms are activated simultaneously, which inhibit helping behaviour. With this finding, these and other scholars support this post’s argument that people’s prosocial or apathetic reactions to a crisis are actually reflexive rather than a conscious decision to or not to help, and that inaction can be explained as “freezing”, or a stalemate between the fight and flight motivational responses (Hortensius & de Gelder, 2018). This response is often accompanied by subjective experiences of derealization and depersonalization, whereby the person feels removed from reality, in a state of confusion or detached uncertainty about their own personhood and the accuracy of their perception of their surroundings (Kozlowska et al., 2015). Fittingly, cognitive scientists have described depersonalization as the experience of looking at the world from a distance, through an apparent window (Ciaunica et al., 2020): the precise experience of Genovese’s witnesses.
Social psychology tells us that, also like animals, we often resolve uncertainties about our surroundings using social learning: looking to others’ reactions to inform how we perceive our surroundings (Asch, 1956; Bandura, 1977; Gibson & Walk, 1960; Sherif, 1935). An experimental study by Darley & Latané (1968) demonstrated that people will even doubt their own evaluations of danger, even if they themselves could be at risk, when they perceive no sign from a group validating that the danger is real. If, as Festinger (1957) theorized, morally-incongruent behavior can cause cognitive dissonance which can then perpetuate more morally-incongruent behavior, it is possible that people who hesitated in the face of danger might retroactively justify their inaction by clinging to their initial belief that the danger was not real, which could prolong that behavior while the event is occurring and/or perpetuate similar behaviors in future. Applied to the Genovese case, perhaps rather than logically assume that someone else had surely called for help, witnesses might have incorporated other witnesses’ seemingly unconcerned reactions into their own reality testing, rationalizing that “if this were really happening, there would be some sign that someone else had called for help by now.” This seems a much more plausible application of the diffusion of responsibility to bystanders of a drawn-out traumatic event (who were not themselves in danger): the seemingly logical rationalization bystanders cling to post-hoc, when really their morally-incongruent behavior was the product of freeze, and cyclical phases of reality testing and cognitive dissonance.
As was apparent with Genovese’s murder, rationalizing morally-incongruent inaction can prolong and perpetuate morally-incongruent behavior while a crisis is still occurring, which can have harmful if not lethal consequences; however, rationalizing morally-incongruent behavior even after the fact can negatively impact other domains, such as where reconciliation efforts are required. Particularly when there is a history of oppression and systemic inequalities, there is no hope of reconciliation without acknowledgement; reconciliation between two such groups depends upon the offending party’s ability to fully confront and acknowledge the severity of their wrongdoing against the other. Succumbing to the drive to avoid any dissonance that might result from accepting the moral-incongruity of one’s actions may drive the offending party both to deny and/or rationalize others’ histories of oppression, delaying if not destroying the reconciliation process, and perpetuating harmful patterns of injustice for generations to come. There are always many actors involved in every regional, national, international and intercultural conflict, but if we do not confront and take responsibility for at least our own contributions to the hurt and injustice done against others, who will?
About the Author
Julia Sebastien is a Specialized Honors Psychology student at York University with a prior Honors degree in Media, Information and Technoculture and in Advanced Arts and Humanities from Western University. She is particularly interested in the ways in which the lines between fiction, perception, and reality begin to blur.
References
Asch, S. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093718
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Ciaunica, A., Charlton, J., & Farmer, H. (2020). When the window cracks: Transparency and the fractured self in depersonalisation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09677-z
Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 377–383. http://doi.org/10.1037/h0025589
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Gibson, E., & Walk, R. (1960). The "Visual Cliff". Scientific American, 202(4), 64-71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24940447
Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. M. (2010). Motivational processes underlying both prejudice and helping. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 313–331. doi:10.1177/1088868310361239
Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. M. (2015). Searching for the prosocial personality. In Schroeder, D. A., Graziano, W. G. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of prosocial behavior (pp. 231–255). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Review, 30, 4-17.
Hortensius, R., & de Gelder, B. (2018). From Empathy to Apathy: The Bystander Effect Revisited. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(4), 249–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417749653
Kozlowska, K., Walker, P., McLean, L., & Carrive, P. (2015). Fear and the Defense Cascade: Clinical Implications and Management. Harvard review of psychiatry, 23(4), 263–287. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000065
Krajicek, David (March 13, 2011). "The killing of Kitty Genovese: 47 years later, still holds sway over New Yorkers". New York Daily News. New York City: Tribune Publishing. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012.
Lemann, Nicholas (March 2, 2014). "A Call for Help: What the Kitty Genovese Story Really Means". The New Yorker. New York City: Condé Nast.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525
Pelonero, Catherine (2016). Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences. New York City: Skyhorse Publishing.
Rosenthal, A. M. (1964). Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21527-6.
Sherif, M. (1935). A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology, 27(187).
Following the rape/murder of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964, which began in plain view of her Queens apartment, psychologists scrambled to make sense of what had transpired; how could 38 citizens, who witnessed this highly visible, audible, and preventable horror from their apartment room windows, do absolutely nothing but watch? Researchers Darley and Latané (1968) provided one explanation: a “diffusion of responsibility.”
A diffusion of responsibility occurs when the presence of multiple bystanders reduces the perceived responsibility each individual witness feels to take action. Each witness’ perceived responsibility is reduced because each assumes someone else will surely act. To support their hypothesis, Darley and Latané (1968) conducted a series of studies demonstrating that as the number of witnesses to a staged crisis increased, the longer it took for any one person to intervene. Despite the dominance of Darley and Latané’s theory, also dubbed the bystander effect, it seems an unsatisfactory explanation for how and why some 38 people passively witnessed a brutal crime lasting half an hour while ignoring Genovese’s cries for help (Lemann, 2014). This post thus posits that the freeze response, derealization, and cognitive dissonance are more plausible explanations for these witnesses’ prolonged inaction.
Ever since supposedly regular citizens showed themselves capable of participating in atrocities such as the Holocaust, social psychologists studied when and how assumedly average people could be pressured into behaving incongruently to their attitudes and morals, such as when conforming to or obeying others (Asch, 1956; Milgram, 1963). Haney et al.’s (1973) infamous Stanford prison experiment highlighted social identity theory: one’s own identity, behavior, and sense of morality can become supplanted by those belonging to the role one adopts; in Haney et al.’s study, participants’ behavior detached from their own morals and aligned instead with their new role of either abusive guard or acquiescent prisoner. Inextricably linked with this theory of social identity is Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance: when a person’s public behavior does not accord with their private belief, a tension arises, driving the person to change their private belief—usually not their public behavior—until both are in agreement. The moral incongruency of their abusive behavior thus would have driven Haney et al.’s “guards” to align themselves with their roles even more fiercely to justify their actions and to escape any psychological tension resultant from confronting it.
Darley and Latané’s (1968) assertion that witnesses made the rational and cogent, though incorrect, assumption that another witness would surely take action seems an ill-fitting explanation for the prolonged inertia of Genovese’s witnesses, who remained frozen, transfixed by the scene unfolding below, beyond the point at which it would have become apparent that no help had been summoned. Darley and Latané’s (1968) theory of bystander apathy also does not satisfactorily cover other possible causes of witnesses’ inaction. First, apartment dwellers cannot easily see other bystanders nearby to the victim, a critical factor of the diffusion of responsibility: though Genovese’s witnesses were likely aware that there must have been other witnesses, they likely could neither see nor interact with each other to confirm whether anyone had sent for help, or, equally critically, whether their evaluation of the danger was even accurate. What if, rather than the diffusion of responsibility, witnesses’ immobility resulted from a primal instinct characterized by fear and an indecisive tie between approach and avoid motivations: the freeze response (Kozlowska et al., 2015)?
Rather than an approach or avoidance motivation like with fight or flight, the freeze response begets tonic immobility (Kozlowska et al., 2015). While animals (e.g., deer) also freeze, people can enter a freeze state while experiencing trauma, as might have Genovese’s witnesses. Research by Graziano and Habashi (2010, 2015) supports that in an emergency, both the evolutionarily preserved fight and flight mechanisms are activated simultaneously, which inhibit helping behaviour. With this finding, these and other scholars support this post’s argument that people’s prosocial or apathetic reactions to a crisis are actually reflexive rather than a conscious decision to or not to help, and that inaction can be explained as “freezing”, or a stalemate between the fight and flight motivational responses (Hortensius & de Gelder, 2018). This response is often accompanied by subjective experiences of derealization and depersonalization, whereby the person feels removed from reality, in a state of confusion or detached uncertainty about their own personhood and the accuracy of their perception of their surroundings (Kozlowska et al., 2015). Fittingly, cognitive scientists have described depersonalization as the experience of looking at the world from a distance, through an apparent window (Ciaunica et al., 2020): the precise experience of Genovese’s witnesses.
Social psychology tells us that, also like animals, we often resolve uncertainties about our surroundings using social learning: looking to others’ reactions to inform how we perceive our surroundings (Asch, 1956; Bandura, 1977; Gibson & Walk, 1960; Sherif, 1935). An experimental study by Darley & Latané (1968) demonstrated that people will even doubt their own evaluations of danger, even if they themselves could be at risk, when they perceive no sign from a group validating that the danger is real. If, as Festinger (1957) theorized, morally-incongruent behavior can cause cognitive dissonance which can then perpetuate more morally-incongruent behavior, it is possible that people who hesitated in the face of danger might retroactively justify their inaction by clinging to their initial belief that the danger was not real, which could prolong that behavior while the event is occurring and/or perpetuate similar behaviors in future. Applied to the Genovese case, perhaps rather than logically assume that someone else had surely called for help, witnesses might have incorporated other witnesses’ seemingly unconcerned reactions into their own reality testing, rationalizing that “if this were really happening, there would be some sign that someone else had called for help by now.” This seems a much more plausible application of the diffusion of responsibility to bystanders of a drawn-out traumatic event (who were not themselves in danger): the seemingly logical rationalization bystanders cling to post-hoc, when really their morally-incongruent behavior was the product of freeze, and cyclical phases of reality testing and cognitive dissonance.
As was apparent with Genovese’s murder, rationalizing morally-incongruent inaction can prolong and perpetuate morally-incongruent behavior while a crisis is still occurring, which can have harmful if not lethal consequences; however, rationalizing morally-incongruent behavior even after the fact can negatively impact other domains, such as where reconciliation efforts are required. Particularly when there is a history of oppression and systemic inequalities, there is no hope of reconciliation without acknowledgement; reconciliation between two such groups depends upon the offending party’s ability to fully confront and acknowledge the severity of their wrongdoing against the other. Succumbing to the drive to avoid any dissonance that might result from accepting the moral-incongruity of one’s actions may drive the offending party both to deny and/or rationalize others’ histories of oppression, delaying if not destroying the reconciliation process, and perpetuating harmful patterns of injustice for generations to come. There are always many actors involved in every regional, national, international and intercultural conflict, but if we do not confront and take responsibility for at least our own contributions to the hurt and injustice done against others, who will?
About the Author
Julia Sebastien is a Specialized Honors Psychology student at York University with a prior Honors degree in Media, Information and Technoculture and in Advanced Arts and Humanities from Western University. She is particularly interested in the ways in which the lines between fiction, perception, and reality begin to blur.
References
Asch, S. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093718
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Ciaunica, A., Charlton, J., & Farmer, H. (2020). When the window cracks: Transparency and the fractured self in depersonalisation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09677-z
Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 377–383. http://doi.org/10.1037/h0025589
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Gibson, E., & Walk, R. (1960). The "Visual Cliff". Scientific American, 202(4), 64-71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24940447
Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. M. (2010). Motivational processes underlying both prejudice and helping. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 313–331. doi:10.1177/1088868310361239
Graziano, W. G., Habashi, M. M. (2015). Searching for the prosocial personality. In Schroeder, D. A., Graziano, W. G. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of prosocial behavior (pp. 231–255). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). A study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Review, 30, 4-17.
Hortensius, R., & de Gelder, B. (2018). From Empathy to Apathy: The Bystander Effect Revisited. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(4), 249–256. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417749653
Kozlowska, K., Walker, P., McLean, L., & Carrive, P. (2015). Fear and the Defense Cascade: Clinical Implications and Management. Harvard review of psychiatry, 23(4), 263–287. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000065
Krajicek, David (March 13, 2011). "The killing of Kitty Genovese: 47 years later, still holds sway over New Yorkers". New York Daily News. New York City: Tribune Publishing. Archived from the original on October 25, 2012.
Lemann, Nicholas (March 2, 2014). "A Call for Help: What the Kitty Genovese Story Really Means". The New Yorker. New York City: Condé Nast.
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371–378. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040525
Pelonero, Catherine (2016). Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences. New York City: Skyhorse Publishing.
Rosenthal, A. M. (1964). Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-21527-6.
Sherif, M. (1935). A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology, 27(187).
