Rolando Lopez Blog Post 1

1. In the Kitty Genovese case, thirty-eight people watched as Genovese was killed in a time span of 37 minutes. The “diffusion of responsibility effect” explained in Darley and Latane’s essay as the effect that a person that is surrounded by others is less likely to respond to an emergency and the sense of personal responsibility is reduced. In this case the people watching as she was murdered didn’t think that they were responsible for helping this woman believing that someone would help. A news story that I found that resembles this story is when about 100 motorists passed by a young girl in the highway who witnesses say was “waving her hands frantically trying to wave down passing cars” the girl was strangled and raped. I found this case to be very upsetting since it was a 10 year old that needed help on a highway. Normally a child would get more attention especially if they are in a highway trying to get help.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=22oRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7uADAAAAIBAJ&pg=5532,5131066&

2. A good Samaritan story that I found was that of a man waiting for a subway train with his two young daughters tried to pull a 19 year old student from the rails of a subway station and when he couldn’t do that, he jumped down and laid on top of the boy to get him between the ground and the oncoming subway train. The train missed both of them by 2 inches. This case was uplifting since the man risked his own life for a stranger, if people were truly alienated and withdrawn from one another the student would not have lived.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/03/national/main2324961.shtml?