Everything you know about Kitty Genovese is wrong.

[lisarea]

I knew there was some exaggeration in the original narratives, and that someone claimed they had called the police but they hadn't shown up, but wow. This really makes it sound like the neighbors were scapegoated:

Nicholas Lemann: What the Kitty Genovese Story Really Means : The New Yorker

There are even more damning details in this article:

Don’t Look Now - The New Inquiry

So even after he'd escaped from prison and was raping and assaulting people, the cops were all "Meh. We'll do it later."

So, for pretty close to fifty years, those 33-38 neighbors have been used as a cautionary textbook example of the bystander effect while the cops and the media got off scot free.

[Ari]

This thread title really could be, "Everything you know about 60s pysch studies is wrong"
The bystander effect, the Millgram experiment, the Stanford Prison experiment, etc. all mostly bullshit.

[lisarea]

"Everything you know about compelling and neatly organized media narratives is wrong."

[ChuckF]

Everything You Know About Media Narratives is Wrong! Local Mom Discovers Secret History that Cops and Media Don't Want You to Know!

Sorry, this is a serious thread.

[BrotherMan]

MEDIA BLAMED FOR ALL SOCIAL WOES

Obama Admin Curiously Silent

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Ari

This thread title really could be, "Everything you know about 60s pysch studies is wrong"
The bystander effect, the Millgram experiment, the Stanford Prison experiment, etc. all mostly bullshit.

The phenomena themselves almost certainly exist, and they were and are useful for shaping cultural attitudes. The Milgram experiment especially had a huge effect on the way certain segments of society viewed deference to authority. And by 'certain segments of society,' of course, I mean middle class white people.

But the problem is that they're all presented as simplistic little morality tales, and they tend to ignore the massively complex social structures they're conducted in. They fit a simple, easy to understand narrative and they conclude with a moral that'd fit on a bumpersticker or a tweet.

The thing about psych studies is that they're specifically designed to prompt certain behaviors, and there's some understanding that these situations were fabricated in order to test a specific set of behaviors and reactions. The Genovese thing wasn't. It was a real life thing that happened that Rosenthal was able to pigeonhole into his personal narrative.

Toward the end of the New Yorker article, there's that story about his sister Bess, who was flashed on the street, ran home, then got a cold and died. And his interpretation was that “Bess was murdered by this criminal who took her life away, no less than the monster who killed Kitty Genovese.”

That is not a guy who really does subtlety and context. (You can pretty much tell from his book, too. It's like a literate Nancy Grace. Very, very purple.)

So this guy--this raging homophobe and authoritarian who was probably responsible in part for those witnesses being marginalized to the point that they were afraid to call the police--was able to twist her murder into his stupidly simplistic ax grinding narrative, just as he was able to blame his sister's illness and death on a 'sexual pervert' while ignoring all the other contributing factors.

But I do not think this is unique to the 60s by any stretch. If anything, I think it's probably gotten worse. Everyone does social experiments now. They're on network TV all the time, teenagers do them and put them on YouTube, and nobody ever ever is surprised by their results. They always manage to 'prove' whatever they set out to, and those things never acknowledge any sort of complicating social factors that fall outside the scope of their intended narrative.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by lisarea

The phenomena themselves almost certainly exist

Sure the very basic aspect of the phenomena exist, (humans differ to authority for example) but many of these studies were on par with pop-sci reality-tv in their methodology.

Along with all the reasons you've mentioned another problem with many of these studies is everyone took them at face value and no one bothered to try and repeat the results. There are a few groups that are repeating many of these early studies and are getting different results. People don't seem to differ to authority in the same way or extent they are claimed to in the millgram shock experiment.

While a topic for another thread (which I may just start after gathering some information) most addiction studies are bogus as well.

[lisarea]

Yeah, your post made me look up some of the criticisms of those studies, some of which I'd never heard of before. And dang!

THRAD! THRAD!

[Watser?]

I just need to point out here that I knew absolutely nothing about Kitty Genovese and so nothing I knew was wrong.

[Ensign Steve]

Me too, but then once I read the thread title, the only thing I knew about Kitty Genovese was that everything I knew about Kitty Genovese was wrong. But if that's true, then everything I knew about Kitty Genovese wasn't wrong, which means that everything I knew about Kitty Genovese was right. But if the only thing I knew about Kitty Genovese was that everything I knew about Kitty Genovese was wrong, then I really didn't know that thing at all. Or did I?

[livius drusus]

[Ensign Steve]

[lisarea]

I'll bet you've heard about it before even if it didn't mention her name. At least in the US, it's kind of a cultural touchstone, like people will mention the 38 witnesses or quote the "I didn't want to get involved" guy when talking about the bystander effect, or to demonstrate this notion that Americans or New Yorkers are apathetic and self-centered.

I bet you'll get a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon with it before long.

Which, tangentially, the best Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is the meta one, where you get one of itself.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Trekky vid

That's actually Epimenides' paradox. All Cretans are liars said Epimenides who was from Crete.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I'll bet you've heard about it before even if it didn't mention her name. At least in the US, it's kind of a cultural touchstone, like people will mention the 38 witnesses or quote the "I didn't want to get involved" guy when talking about the bystander effect, or to demonstrate this notion that Americans or New Yorkers are apathetic and self-centered.

I bet you'll get a Baader-Meinhof phenomenon with it before long.

Which, tangentially, the best Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is the meta one, where you get one of itself.

You are the fucking best with that!

That's the one where I'm always like "what's the name of that phenomenon? I never get the meta one when I need it!"

[Ymir's blood]

She's still the reason that Kovaks became a vigilante though. That much is true.

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by lisarea

Yeah, your post made me look up some of the criticisms of those studies, some of which I'd never heard of before. And dang!

THRAD! THRAD!

Yes. For example

There are a few groups that are repeating many of these early studies and are getting different results. People don't seem to differ to authority in the same way or extent they are claimed to in the millgram shock experiment.

The culture of the 60's differs from today, so the results probably won't be the same.

[Pan Narrans]

Originally Posted by LadyShea

* Pan Narrans wonders where he left his Rusty Crowbar of Prescrictivism +3

[Janet]

People did reproduce Milgram's experiments, including himself. They also expanded on them, making the person giving the shocks get closer and closer to the victim, up to the point where they were hold the victim's hand down on the shock plate personally. It got so bad that the were forbidden by all psych ethics boards around the end of the Seventies. That's why you don't get Milgram type experiments today.

To go along with what Shea said, I argued in class that the problem with that was that instead of people smugly saying, "It couldn't happen here," you got people smugly saying, "It couldn't happen now."

I did have a TA who did her own minor take on it by putting on a lab coat, grabbing a clip board and wandering around campus asking people to do stuff for a study. She was amazed that she could get guys to do push-ups in the mud just by the power of a lab coat and a clip board.

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Janet

I did have a TA who did her own minor take on it by putting on a lab coat, grabbing a clip board and wandering around campus asking people to do stuff for a study. She was amazed that she could get guys to do push-ups in the mud just by the power of a lab coat and a clip board.

I think this experiment needs a control where a dude in a labcoat asks other dudes to do push-ups in the mud.

[lisarea]

I actually don't think that specifically could happen now, but that's just because people would recognize the Milgram and the prison experiments. But people still reflexively comply with authority or perceived authority. That's why loud stupid old white men are still bossing people around all the time.

Sort of similarly, I wonder if widely publicized media coverage of the Genovese case and things like it have sometimes made people more or even too likely to intervene. There's that show, What Would You Do?, for example, that started out exploring sexist and racist biases it seems like, but then ran out of ideas and became a sort of generic search for busybodies who will come lecture people having conservations they disapprove of. And the thing is, when they do the big camera reveal, it seems like people frequently recognize the show and are all like, "YAY I WON BEING ON TV!"

I actually sort of worry sometimes that people are going overboard with the whole getting involved thing because of a misleading vividness making people think they might be a subject of a study or a hidden camera show at any given time.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Adam

I think this experiment needs a control where a dude in a labcoat asks other dudes to do push-ups in the mud.

Misread:

a dude in a labcoat asks other dudes to do push-ups in the mind.

We need this control as well.

[Janet]

Originally Posted by Adam

I think this experiment needs a control where a dude in a labcoat asks other dudes to do push-ups in the mud.

I'm pretty sure some of the dudes in her class did it as well. Also, she was not particularly good looking. She wasn't ugly, just average looking. As far as I remember anyway, it was twenty years ago.

[Ari]

Originally Posted by lisarea

I actually sort of worry sometimes that people are going overboard with the whole getting involved thing because of a misleading vividness making people think they might be a subject of a study or a hidden camera show at any given time.

Yes this.
Or to feel like they nee to 'do something' even when what it was pointless or harmful. Knowing when/where/how to get involved in something is a skill in its own right and in many cases I'm glad the average person doesn't try to intervene in everything they see. The most generic version of this is car accidents where people assume the car might just arbitrarily explode at anytime so they drag people away from the wreck, possibly damaging a spinal injury. Or get involved in a fight/dispute and become the target and/or exacerbating the situation. Speaking of, I've probably said it before but I'll say it again, Pepperspray is your friend!