----- Original Message -----
On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 05:42:20 -0400, Allen Esterson wrote:
> What comes around goes around (even occasionally on TIPS) - second time
> this week! From TIPS 3 March 2004:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg09231.html
>
> Re: Kitty Genovese revisited
> Allen Esterson
> Wed, 03 Mar 2004 09:51:31 -0800
>
> By strange coincidence I've had a synchronistic visitation. Michael
> Sylvester's posting on Kitty Genovese came but a couple of days after a
> friend of mine sent me an e-mail about the same subject. (He had discussed
> the incident with me a couple of weeks back in relation to a psychological
> topic he is engaged in writing about.)Anyway, it turns out that there's a
> website that challenges some of the supposed facts about the incident:
> "What you think you know about the Kitty Genovese case might not be true."
> http://www.oldkewgardens.com/
>
> I hope some TIPSters (yes, you Stephen!) will visit the site and give us
> your views. I know very little about the incident, and would be interested
> to know what people think about the points made there.
In reviewing the Kitty Genovese case, one way to think about
what happened is to realize that there may be three levels of knowledge
one might have about the actual circumstance of her death:
(1) "Eye of God Truth" Knowledge: a narrative or an account
can be constructed that represents a completely objective and full
account of what happened. Experimentalists try to construct
miniaturized versions of situations where they may have "Eye of
God Truth" (i.e., complete knowledge of all relevant aspects of a
situation or as close to complete as possible) though this has been
known to fail in both mundane and spectacular ways (e.g., Dworkin
& Miller, 1986). As scientists, I believe, we hope to attain such
a state of knowledge but realize that this is only an ideal that usually
is not attained. If we cannot attain such knowledge in the context
of good, well-run controlled experiments, what chance do we have
of obtaining such knowledge about mundane events in the real world?
As hard as it might be, we may have to accept that we may never
completely know what happened in a situation and only hope that
our knowledge and understanding is as accurate as possible.
(2) Factual Knowledge: we may not have complete knowledge
about a situation but we may have facts (i.e., statements that are
undisputed to be true) that may be relevant and which allow us to
consider which hypotheses are tenable and which are not. Although
this type of knowledge is very useful and many social systems
depend upon them (e.g., medical treatment, police investigtions, etc.)
there are at least two problems: (a) we may only have a few facts,
far fewer than is needed to fully understand the situation from which
they derive (the "jigsaw puzzle problem" -- one may know enough
to have an overview of what is going on but is unable to make out
other specific conditions in the "picture") and (b) there may be
several different ways or contexts which can be used to interpret
the facts at hand: which do we choose? How do we understand
facts and how they may relate to other facts and events may not be
clear (e.g., correctly interpreting "those who cure you will kill you").
Additional facts, logical analysis, and the development of insights
and testable hypothesis my reduce uncertainty but unless one has
complete knowledge (see (1) above) one may never be 100% (or
even close to that) confident that one has a completely accurate
account. Presumably, police reports, witness statement, court
transcripts, etc., would serve as "facts" but it may not always be
clear how "factual" source actually are.
(3) "What is on the Record Knowledge": Popular media,
traditionally newspapers, have served as a basis for recording
significant events in a society and whether these records/reports
are accurate at the time that they are made may be less important
than other functions they may serve (e.g., providing an
understandable account of what happened in a situation even if
the initial account is wrong either in specific facts and/or overall
presentation -- allowing people to develop the "illusion of
understanding" may be preferable in the short-run than to leave
them in heightened state of uncertainty which may cause them to
feel stress and anxiety as well as to behave in unpredictable and
violent ways). If one looks at the newspaper account shortly
after the 9/11 attacks, one will find many errors of reporting
(e.g., the NY Post had a diagram of the World Trade Center
that gave the wrong addresses to the now-gone towers; I just
shook my head when I considered how many other errors there
had to be at the time). However, even with subsequent corrections,
all these stories and reports become part of the "record" as
well as the social memory that develops around the event.
Although there may be arguments about the accuracy of the
record, one can at least point to the record as a source for one's
knowledge ("Hey, I read it in the New York Times!"). I'll
leave it to our resident historian(s) to either extend these points
or to cheerfully point out that I don't know what I'm talking about. ;-)
Getting back to the Kitty Genovese case, only God has (1) above
and, if he/she/it exists, doesn't seem to be in a hurry to share it (or
tidbits on other issues) with us. So, perhaps the best we can do is
try to get as many of the facts as possible and then construct a
narrative that presents the facts and fair interpretations of those
facts as objectively as possible. Perhaps this has been done in
the Kitty Genovese case but I am unaware of any definitive source
claiming to have done this, at least one that has undergone peer
review and scrutiny by relevant experts. I think the piece on the
Kew Gardens website is an attempt to do this but my examination
of the webpage doesn't show that it is submitted for publication or
presentation at a relevant conference (e.g., APA or APS) or any
critical scrutiny outside of the comments left by readers on the website.
The author, Joseph De May, tells a good story but a good story
does not make a narrative either true or accurate. Given that this
is a critical event relevant to social psychology as well as to New
York City AND the large number of colleges in NYC, my first
impression is "Gee, wouldn't it be great if someone at the
CUNY-Graduate Center or CUNY's John Jay College undertook
this as a project, that is, establish what are the known facts about the
Genovese case, to what extent do newspaper and media accounts
(i.e., 'The Record') agree or disagree?" If New York native Stanley
Milgram were still alive, perhaps he would get a graduate student
to do a dissertation on it. If Phil Zimbardo, another New Yorker and
classmate of Milgram were so inclined, perhaps he could get a
grad student to do it. But it might be best if one of the CUNY
schools or other NYC colleges/universities got involved in such a
project. At the very least, it seems like there would be a book
in it. 1/2 :-)
Finally, just to get some Japanese cinema in, some might be tempted
to explain the Genovese case and media accounts of it away as instances
of the "Rashomon Effect" (after Akira Kurosawa's movie "Rashomon"),
that is, different viewpoints of the same event have equal validity,
suggesting
either that there is no single objective truth or that each person's
perception is somehow inherently truthful or whatever. Kurosawa's
film is ambiguous on this point: is there a single truthful point of view
or are all viewpoints truthful? I believe arguments have been made for
both perspectives. However, it is important to remember that though
the heart of the movie is about a rape and murder, the surface is
actually a "police procedural", a criminal investigation of the crimes
committed by Tajomaru, the character played by Toshiro Mifune. The
viewer never sees what the police conclude and what the ultimate verdict
is. Such details may seem to pale in comparison to the issue of why
four different people provide such different accounts but, at the end of
the day, something has to written into the record, the criminal punished,
and the case closed. If I may suggest a film to watch for people interested
in these issues (as well as tying in some issues regarding Kitty
Genovese), watch Yoshitaro Nomura's "Zero Focus" ("Zero no shoten";
1961). It too is a "police procedural" gives one a sense of the larger
context that the events of Rashomon may have occured in (i.e., close
the case when a reasonable account tying together the evidence has
been achieved). It is available on DVD and Amazon but may also be
available through video rental services (or your college library).
Additonal info about the film can be gotten from the IMDB website:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0227858/
Developmental psychologists might want to watch Nomura's film
"The Demon" ("Kichiku"; 1978), specifically regarding issues of child
abuse and neglect.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Refs
Dworkin, B. R., & Miller, N. E. (1986). Failure to replicate visceral
learning in the acute curarized rat preparation. Behavioral neuroscience,
100(3), 299-314.
---
To make changes to your subscription go to:
http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
