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In 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her apartment building in New York City while, according to initial newspaper reports, dozens of neighbors reportedly heard her cries for help without intervening. Although later investigations questioned some details of the original account, the case sparked intense psychological interest in a phenomenon that came to be known as the bystander effect: the surprising tendency for individuals to be less likely to help a victim when other people are present. This finding contradicted a common assumption that a larger crowd would naturally increase the odds that at least one person would step in to assist.

Psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané were among the first to systematically study this phenomenon through controlled experiments. In one influential study, participants believed they were having a discussion over an intercom system with other participants, one of whom appeared to suffer a medical emergency. The researchers found that participants were significantly less likely to seek help when they believed multiple other people were also listening, compared to when they believed they were the only listener. Darley and Latané proposed that this occurs due to a diffusion of responsibility, in which each individual assumes someone else will act, reducing their own sense of personal obligation. A related factor, known as pluralistic ignorance, occurs when bystanders look to others' reactions to determine whether a situation is truly an emergency, and a lack of visible concern from others can be misread as a signal that intervention isn't necessary.

Subsequent research has explored ways to counteract the bystander effect. [A] Training programs that teach individuals to recognize the psychological barriers involved have been shown to increase intervention rates in emergency situations. [B] Some programs specifically instruct participants to single out one bystander directly, rather than making a general appeal to the crowd, since a direct request removes the ambiguity that allows responsibility to be diffused. [C] Public safety campaigns have increasingly incorporated these findings, encouraging witnesses to point at a specific person and assign them a clear task, such as calling emergency services. [D] This simple technique has proven remarkably effective at overcoming the hesitation that so often accompanies group settings.