A Florida Suicide, Kitty Genovese, Bullying,Bystanders and Brain Centers by Debra Sanders

Since no one actually seems to be reading this blog right now, I am going to deviate from my Wizard of Oz analogy for the time being, and comment on something that came out in the news 18 minutes ago and is making my heart and my stomach just ache.

Anyone out there old enough to remember the Kitty Genovese story in 1964, recalls the horror of thinking of a 29 year old woman being stabbed to death with neighbors ignoring her cries for help. It was after that The Bystander Effect and Diffusion of Responsibility garnered the attention of social scientists and researchers.

The truth is, much of the Kitty Genovese story, as reported by the news at the time, was inaccurate, but that doesn't negate the very real existence of both these phenomenon.

AP just reported that a 19 year old teen kept web viewers watching for 12 hours as he combined and swallowed drugs with the full intent of committing suicide. During that time some viewers egged him on, some attempted to talk him out of it, but no one notified the police or a moderator until it was too late and this young man was dead.

The Kitty Genovese story might have been hyped for good copy, but in our do-all, tell-all, see-all society of web cams, podcasts and virtual everything, no hype is needed here. How can it be that a site that had 670,000 during the previous month did not have one person interested in, or willing, to stop a suicide in progress?

Recently Benjamin Lahey, a University of Chicago researcher, conducted a study which--according to him--showed that when watching scenes of strangers being hurt, the pleasure and reward center of the brains of teens with a history of violence and bullying became activated. In Lahey's words, "They were not only indifferent to pain--they loved it." These brain centers did not activate in the centers of the control group that had no history of violence or bullying--in fact in those subjects, their own pain centers activated, suggesting feelings of empathy.

I have many questions regarding the Lahey study, however at the moment the first two become these: If this study can be generalized to the entire population of people watching this web cam, are we to assume everyone who watched on this site (Justin.tv) is a violent offender and therefore enjoyed watching a young man in his dying state? And if not, what on earth does this say about those of us who are NOT violent offenders and yet who stand by and take no action in the face of another person's pain?

It brings to mind the not-so-long ago video of a boy being bullied and beaten on the school's playground as the group of onlookers included some who egged on the beating and others who silently watched before finally, one lone student notified the authorities (though not before significant bodily harm was incurred).


Obama's election restored my joy and hope in our future; this has the sad effect of making me question whether we really have deteriorated too far as a culture to redeem ourselves.