The rape and murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 which was allegedly* witnessed by 38 people who did not respond to her cries for help, sparked a great deal of research into the behaviour of bystanders (http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/scraig/gansberg.html). Bibb Latane and John Darley were particularly interested in the case; their investigations led to several factors that they believe affect bystander behaviour:

Child's Temperament and Parenting Style Predict Problem Behaviour The way mothers interact with their babies in the first year of life is strongly related to how children behave later on. Both a mother's parenting style and an infant's temperament reliably predict challenging behaviour in later childhood (Lahey et al, 2008). Their findings have just been published online in Springer's Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.