Cognitive Impotence

Not to choose is still a choice.

Sartre

What is Cognitive Impotence?

In my last article, I discussed heuristics and cognitive biases, particularly those emphasized by Dr. Robert Cialdini in Influence: the Science of Persuasion.

He describes situations where, relying on heuristics, we tend to say “yes” without thinking.

I call this the “impulsive yes.”

We are most vulnerable to giving an impulsive yes in the following six situations:

(1) reciprocity,

(2) commitment and consistency,

(3) social proof,

(4) authority,

(5) liking, and

(6) scarcity.

Cognitive impotence is the reverse of social proof.

Social proof means we tend to do something because everyone else is doing it; cognitive impotence describes the tendency to not do something because everyone else is not doing it.

Examples 

“Why vote? Both parties are corrupt. They are both bought and paid for. What’s the point?”

“The rich make the rules. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it always has been and always will be.”

“You can’t fight city hall.”

“What’s with you? You think you can save the world?”

“It’s not my problem.”

Learned helplessness is what Dr. Martin Seligman called the impotence bias based upon conditioning, i.e., if a dog hits an electric fence enough times, eventually, he will stop trying.

You can turn the current off; it won’t matter.

Others describe this phenomenon as “system justification theory” or “ego depletion.”

In the famous case of Kitty Genovese, they called it the “bystander effect.”

Euphemisms for “chickens**t.”

In the 60s, we had a more workaday expression: If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Kitty - 1964

Genovese: pronounced “Genoveese,” rhyming with cheese, unlike and unrelated to the crime family.

Beautiful, trim, extroverted, loved by many, twenty-eight, a leader of a pack of young women, manager of a local Tavern, owner of a little red Fiat convertible, in the flower of youth.

Yet some would later call her “the girl no one cared about.”

Isn’t that the saddest phrase you ever heard?

March is an ambiguous month in Queens, chilly at night but not Arctic-cold, warm in the day but New York warm, not Texas warm.

In Queens, lower middle-income people with unconventional lifestyles sought refuge and clustered in tenements.

Holocaust survivors listened to radios and played cards until all hours, listening to their neighbors do what neighbors do.

At the end of her shift, around 3:30 a.m., Kitty walked an abbreviated path from her car to her apartment alone, heading home.

A small predator named Winston Moses (processed hair, IQ of 135, good paying job, two children) watched her without knowing, or presumably caring, who she was.

As Kitty passed by, he snuck up behind her and stabbed her in the back without cause or reason.

Your run-of-the-mill psychopathic serial killer, Moses, later confessed to killing another woman (Annie Mae Johnson) a week before he attacked Kitty.[1]

“Save me! Save me!” Kitty screamed in her densely populated neighborhood.

How many people heard?

Thirty, some say; some say twice that; thirty-eight, according to the NY Times.[2]

Some of Kitty’s neighbors said they called the police.

The police records show only one call.

Only five witnesses to Kitty’s screams were called at the subsequent trial.

Irene Frost heard, “Please help me! I’ve been stabbed.”

The night doorman, Joseph Fink, working at the apartments nearby, heard and responded by going to bed.

Kitty managed to stumble off around a corner, heading toward her apartment for help.

Cognitive impotence cast its ugly spell.

“Don’t worry. Someone else will do something.”

“But …”

“Best not to get involved.”

After the initial stabbing, Moses drove around surveilling the area for half an hour.

Then, he decided that if no one was going to do anything, he might as well go back and finish the job.

After all, he was a serial killer, and that’s what serial killers do.

He found Kitty limping toward her apartment, and he stabbed her a few more times for good measure.

Andree Picq later said, “I heard her last two screams.”

Kitty managed to crawl into the apartment stairwell where she lived next door to her friend, Sophia.

“Kitty is in the hall, bleeding,” Sophia told her husband.

The stairwell smelled like an abattoir.

“It don’t pay to talk,” Sophia’s husband said. “They twist what you say.”

Who would call the police in this area?

The members of the gay community who were regularly harassed and rousted by police who busted their parties?

The Jews who remembered how much protection the police offered when they were herded into trains for “labor camps” in Germany?

“Save me! Save me.”

No one bothered to be bothered.

Karl Ross saw the second attack from his window.

All he could think of was to call his girlfriend and ask her what to do.

People suffering from cognitive impotence do not think for themselves.

Girlfriend: “Don’t get involved.”

Lynne Tillotson “felt like the neighborhood was safe.”

She heard screaming.

She went back to bed.

Hattie Grund heard screams and later claimed she called the police, but mysteriously, they had no record of it.

According to her, they said, “We already got the call.”

Kitty died in the arms of her friend, Sophia.

Epilogue

Kitty’s death was not in vain; it led to developing the 911 system and neighborhood watch groups like the Guardian Angels.

But what good is that if no one calls?

Bill Clinton described Kitty’s death as proving we are all “fundamentally alone.”

Sartre couldn’t have said it any better.

Apologists later criticized the NYT for calling them “eye-witnesses” when they were, in fact, “ear-witnesses.”

Give me a break.

A jury sentenced Winston to death.

He appealed, and the appellate court reduced his sentence to life.

In 1968, just four years after murdering Kitty, he escaped, terrorized Buffalo, NY, and raped a woman.

In a twist of dark irony, some educational institution awarded him a degree in Sociology in 1977.

What?

Dr. Rufus Fears, former professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, said, “One of the key lessons of history is that we do not learn the lessons of history.”

Let’s prove him wrong this November and overcome our collective cognitive impotence.

Don’t fail to act because you think that is what everyone else will do or because your one puny little voice will matter little compared to the resources of Elon Musk or Harlan Crow.

Please vote and make social activism a more significant part of your lives.

Drilling Down 

The Witness: a documentary about the Genovese case by James Solomon (2016; still available on Prime).

Thirty-Eight Witnesses by New York Times managing editor A.M. Rosenthal (1964, 2016).

Kitty Genovese: The Murder, The Bystanders, The Crime That Changed America by Kevin Cook (2014).

Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero (2016).

“No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy by Marcia M. Gallo (2015).

[1] He shot her 4x with a 22, then he raped her and set her house on fire.

[2] The New York Times later retracted the characterization of the witnesses as “eye” witnesses. No one knows, or could have known, how many “ear” witnesses heard Kitty’s screams. How relevant that is, I leave up to you.