The Bystander E ect: Societal and Academic Implications of a Neglected Sexuality

The inaction of Genovese’s neighbors was attributed to the bystander effect, but this attribution completely disregarded the socio-legal repercussions of associating with a homosexual at this time in history. Therefore, the premise of the initial results from Darley and Latané was based on an incomplete narrative. While this oversight does not negate the usefulness of the theory, it calls into question the effect that this confounding variable could have had on the strength of these results. After all, it is the strength of Darley and Latané’s fi ndings that brought their theory into the spotlight, making it widely studied and applied.