A new project will test how people respond to extreme social situations – particularly the ‘bystander effect’ – using an immersive virtual environment like Second Life where real people interact with each other socially through lifelike animated characters. The bystander effect suggests that the more witnesses there are to an emergency, the less likely an individual bystander is to intervene. This phenomenon was identified as a particular consequence of the assault and murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1964 which was witnessed by some 38 people, all of whom remained bystanders and failed to come to Kitty’s aid.