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The Volunteer’s Dilemma - by Steven Pinker - Behavioral Scientist

behavioralscientist.org · 1,964 words · saved by 1 readers

On March 27, 1964, a New York Times headline proclaimed, “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police,” with the subheading, “Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector.” “For more than half an hour,” the article began, “38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.” The story about the New Yorkers who “didn’t want to get involved” as they heard the blood-curdling screams of Kitty Genovese became a parable of the callousness and alienation of modern urban life. It was soon amplified by an article in Life magazine titled “The Dying Girl That No One Helped” and a book by the New York Times editor A. M. Rosenthal called Thirty-Eight Witnesses. Some journalists never let the facts get in the way of a good morality tale, and the thirty-eighth witness who materialized between the headline and the body of the original story was just one of many humbugs in the report. As the Times, to its credit, admitted

On March 27, 1964, a New York Times headline proclaimed , “37 Who Saw Murder Didn’t Call the Police,” with the subheading, “Apathy at Stabbing of Queens Woman Shocks Inspector.” “For more than half an hour,” the article began, “38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.” The story about the New Yorkers who “didn’t want to get involved” as they heard the blood-curdling screams of Kitty Genovese became a parable of the callousness and alienation of modern urban life. It was soon amplified by an article in Life

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