Anomalous Prosocial Acts 473still discourage action. To explain how, Darley and Latané
(1968) moved beyond existing theory and proposed a diffu-
sion of responsibility. If others are available, each individual
may feel less personal obligation to come forward and help.
One call to the police is as helpful, if not more helpful, than
20 calls. In the Kitty Genovese case, her neighbors may have
seen lights in other windows and assumed that other neigh-
bors had heard the screams and that someone else had already
called. Some may have thought, “Something should be done,
but why should I be the one to do it?” Thoughts like these,
made possible by awareness of other bystanders without
knowing what the others are doing, diffuses the responsibility
to help among all the bystanders present and makes it less
likely that any one bystander will help.
Latané and Darley’s (1970) answer to the question of why
none of the 38 witnesses to the murder of Kitty Genovese
helped has stood up remarkably well to experimental test (see
Latané & Nida, 1981). Still, the psychological process that
underlies diffusion of responsibility remains unclear. Do the
costs of helping lead to a motivated, optimistic redefinition
of the situation (“I’m sure someone else has already helped,
so there is no longer a need”)? Is there a recognition of con-
tinuing need but denial of personal responsibility, either by
reasoning that others present are better qualified to act
(“Somebody’s got to do something, but not me; they’re the
ones who know what to do”) or shifting from a prescriptive to
a descriptive norm (“I can’t be blamed; no one else is doing
anything either”)? Might some people fail to act out of defer-
ence or modesty (“I’ll let someone else be the hero”)? Each
of these processes involves the effect of others on decision
making under pressure, and they are often confounded in
research; yet these processes are distinct. Any or all could
operate, suggesting that more research is needed.
Blaming the Victim
Another important theoretical development stimulated by
reflection on bystander “apathy” was Melvin Lerner’s (1970,
1980) just-world hypothesis. The anomaly on which Lerner
focused was not the failure to help victims of accidents,
attacks, or other emergencies, but rather the more pervasive
and pernicious tendency for the haves in society to be unre-
sponsive to the needs of the have-nots. Lerner observed, as
did Ryan (1971), that people often not only fail to notice need
or to show concern for victims, but that they actively dero-
gate and blame victims.
To explain this apparent anomaly, Lerner turned to the
seemingly prosocial principle of justice. He reasoned as fol-
lows. If children are to delay gratification and pursue long-
term goals, they must develop a belief that effort brings
results. For most of us, this belief in contingency leads in turn
to a belief in a just world, a sense of appropriateness—that
people get what they deserve (and deserve what they get)—
necessary for trust, hope, and confidence in our future.
Witnessing the suffering of innocent victims violates the be-
lief in a just world. In order to reduce the discomfort produced
by this threat, we may help. But there is an alternative: We
may derogate or blame the victims (if they have less, they
must deserve less; that is, they must be less deserving). Lerner
and his associates provided extensive evidence that witness-
ing an innocent victim suffer can lead to derogation (see
Lerner, 1980, for a review). The insight that a natural—even
noble—belief in justice, when carried into an unjust world,
can itself become a source of injustice has proved major.ANOMALOUS PROSOCIAL ACTSIn the 1960s, heightened social conscience focused attention
on anomalous failures to act prosocially. In the broader sweep
of Western thought, this focus is itself anomalous. Through
the centuries, the puzzle that has intrigued those contemplat-
ing the human condition has not been why people fail to care
for others in need; the puzzle has been why people care.
From Aristotle and Aquinas through Hobbes and Bentham
to Nietzsche and Freud, the dominant view in Western
thought has been that people are, at heart, exclusively self-
interested. Given this view, what explains the enormous ef-
fort and energy directed toward benefiting others? At times,
what people do for others can be spectacular. Soldiers have
thrown themselves on live grenades to protect their com-
rades. Crews worked around the clock in extreme danger to
free the trapped victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Firemen died directing others to safety when the World Trade
Center towers collapsed. Surviving an airline crash, Arland
Williams lost his life in the icy waters of the Potomac be-
cause he repeatedly gave others his place in the rescue
helicopter. Mother Teresa dedicated her life to the dying of
Calcutta, the poorest of the poor, bringing care and comfort to
thousands. Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, such as Miep
Gies (1987), who helped hide Anne Frank and her parents,
and Oskar Schindler, risked their own lives—and often the
lives of their loved ones—day after day for months, or even
years.
How can we reconcile these actions with a view that
people are exclusively self-interested? Could some people, to
some degree, under some circumstances, be capable of hav-
ing another person’s interest at heart? Is it possible for one
person to have another person’s welfare as an ultimate goal
(altruism), or is all helping simply an instrumental means of