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Emergency Situations: Bystander Behaviour (handout)
Read page 263 of the Course Companion and answer the questions in the ‘Apply your knowledge’ box.
Do you know this story?
Is religious conviction a factor in people’s willingness to help strangers in need?
Participants: 40 seminary students Aim: To find out whether there’s a
correlation between religious devotion and helping behaviour.
Participants: 40 seminary students Aim: To find out whether there’s a
correlation between religious devotion and helping behaviour.
Peronality questionnaire concerning how religious participants were.
Participants: 40 seminary students Aim: To find out whether there’s a
correlation between religious devotion and helping behaviour.
Peronality questionnaire concerning how religious participants were.
2 conditions: Give a talk on the Good Samaritan parable Give a talk on jobs
IV: whether or not seminarians were told to hurry.
DV: to what extent the seminarians stopped to help.
Findings: Overall 40% helped
Findings: Overall 40% helped 63% of the low-hurry condition
Findings: Overall 40% helped 63% of the low-hurry condition
45% of the intermediate hurry condition
Findings: Overall 40% helped 63% of the low-hurry condition
45% of the intermediate hurry condition
10% of the late condition
Which speech the seminarians were about to give made little difference to their helping behaviour.
What do these results suggest?
How participants had completed the initial questionnaire made no difference to their helping behaviour.
The results suggest that situational factors played a bigger part in helping behaviour than dispositional factors in this study.
Read the newspaper article on what happened on the night of
Kitty Genovese’s death.
Latane and Darley came up with the term bystanderism.
Read pages 264 – 265 of the Course Companion and make notes on • Bystanderism• Diffusion of responsibility• Pluralistic ignorance
Diffusion of responsibility
Participants told they’d be interviewed over an intercom
Heard another ‘participant’ choking
Diffusion of responsibility
When participants thought they were the only one in a position to help, they helped 85% of the time.
Diffusion of responsibility
When participants thought they were the only one in a position to help, they helped 85% of the time.
This dropped to 64% when they thought there was one other person.
Diffusion of responsibility
When participants thought they were the only one in a position to help, they helped 85% of the time.
This dropped to 64% when they thought there was one other person.
And dropped to 31% when they thought there were 4 other people present.
Pluralistic Ignorance
In a group situation, people often look to others to know how to react
What is meant by informational social influence?
What is meant by informational social influence?
Make a note of this.
Latane & Darley asked participants to wait in a waiting room.
Latane & Darley asked participants to wait in a waiting room.
They heard the sound of the female experimenter fall and cry out in another room.
Participants were much more likely to help when they were alone than when they were in the company of a confederate who did not react to the experimenter’s cries.
Why do you think this might be?
In real life, emergency situations are often ambiguous. Observers may not always realize that their help is needed.
People are also less likely to intervene if they think there is a relationship between people, e.g. in the case of domestic violence.
Make some notes about both Latane and Darley’s 1968 and 1969 studies.
Use the FAME framework.
Accompany your notes with a sketch to help you remember the studies later.
Watch this clip and make brief notes about the work of Latane and Darley.
BBC_OU Open2.net - Eyewitness - Bystander intervention.flv
Here’s another example of pluralistic ignorance, informational social influence and the bystander effect.
Watch this interview with Latane and Darley.
