Pushkin.
On the morning of March 13, 1964,
a murder took place in Queens, New York that shook the entire country.
The crime itself was awful,
but the behavior of bystanders who witnessed the event caused widespread revulsion in years of national soul searching.
The incident became the impetus for setting up the 911 emergency call system that we have today.
and transformed the path of psychological research for decades to come.
I first heard the story when I took intro psych as a college freshman back in the 90s.
I dug out my old textbook to see how it was described.
Here it is on page 544 of Peter Gray's psychology, second edition.
In a normally quiet neighborhood in New York City,
a young woman named Kitty Genovese was brutally attacked for a period of 30 minutes outside her apartment building.
Her screams drew the attention of at least 38 people who watched through their apartment windows
while she was repeatedly stabbed and finally murdered.
Not one of the bystanders came to her aid or even called the police.
The incident stirred a national outcry.
Have we become so inured to horror that we simply watch it without lifting a finger?
More than 25 years on, I still remember how shocked I was by that paragraph.
Several dozen people stood there and watched Kitty scream.
How could so many people witness something so awful and just do nothing?