However, regardless of the motivation, people do not always help. This observation first attracted the attention of psychologists in 1964 when a young woman was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in Queens, New York while returning home from work. Although she was screaming for help for over thirty minutes, none of the thirty-eight people who witnessed the attack from a nearby apartment block offered assistance or even called the police until it was too late (Bernstein et al. 656). It would be an oversimplification to assume that all those people who heard her desperate cries and did not intervene were indifferent or uncaring. On the contrary, the police investigation revealed that the majority of them were ordinary, everyday working people, who cared for their families and their friends. What was common in their testimonies was the presumption that someone else would take action to save Kitty Genovese. In the outcry that followed, two social psychologists, Bibb Latane and John Darley, rejected the prevalent explanations for this apparent apathy of bystanders in terms of the general moral decay and proposed instead that the nature of the social situation, in particular the presence of other potential witnesses, reduced the chances of anyone helping.

These "concerns" add a new perspective to the motivation underlying helping, as they indicate that people may help others driven by selfishness rather than altruism. One theory that supports this belief is the Reciprocal Helping theory, which suggests that we respond to a fellow human being's request for help anticipating that we will be helped in return if we ever find ourselves in need. Another explanation, probably the most popular one, is the Arousal: Cost-Reward theory. This theory proposes that "people find the sight of a victim distressing and anxiety-provoking and that this experience motivates them to do something to reduce the unpleasant arousal" (Bernstein et al. 655). "Before rushing to the victim's aid, however, the bystander will first evaluate two aspects of the situation; the costs associated with helping and the costs (to the bystander and the other person) of not helping" (Bernstein et al. 655). In addition, people often strive to aid someone else as a means to assure the adherence to important social norms. A person that witnesses an emergency and avoids interfering usually becomes the target of social criticism and thus experiences strong feelings of guilt. Hence, any act motivated by the need to avoid such unpleasant emotions is deeply egoistic.

The numerous studies of helping behavior stimulated by this tragedy revealed a phenomenon that may explain the inaction of Ms. Genovese´s neighbors. This phenomenon is known as the bystander effect: usually as the number of people who witness an emergency increases, the likelihood that one of them will help decreases. One explanation why the presence of others often reduces helping is that each person thinks someone else will help the victim. That is, the presence of other bystanders allows each individual to experience a d

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Approximate Word count = 2070
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)