Bystanders: looking in the wrong direction?

Bystander research came about after psychologists read a newspaper article about a murder in New York where neighbours and bystanders were reported not to have intervened (Darley and Latané 1968). It turns out that the basis of this article was not true and, in fact, some of the people who witnessed the assault had tried to contact the police but they did not respond. The story about the bystanders was possibly planted by the police to cover their tracks.

Since that time, I would argue that psychologists have constantly been looking in the wrong direction. The issue with the murder that appeared in the first newspaper report was not the behaviour of the bystanders but the behaviour of the man who stalked and murdered a young woman. The violence of men against women resonates down the generations and still we look at the behaviour of the bystanders rather than the perpetrators. It’s as if the psychologists have gone to see a play and chosen to watch what the audience was doing rather than watch the actors on the stage.