HANDOUT 4

ADVANCED SUBSIDIARY LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

PILIAVIN, RODIN & PILIAVIN (1969) – GOOD SAMARITANISM: AN UNDERGROUND PHENOMENON?

Introduction to the study

Consider the real life event on which this study was based:

In March 1964 a young woman called Kitty Genovese was fatally stabbed in the New York City.What was remarkable about this slaying was that there were 38 witnesses who did nothingUntil it was too late. The killer first attacked Kitty as she made her way home at 3 a.m. afterWork. Kitty screamed and lights went on in surrounding apartments, but no one did anythingBut call out. The killer attacked twice more, finally killing Kitty in her doorway. The policeWere called at 3.50 a.m.

So, yet again a psychological study was triggered by a real life event. Two psychologists Latane and Darley, like you, sought to answer the question, “Why?” They did this through various experiments. They suggested, and found evidence to support their hypothesis, that the problem was diffusion of responsibility - no one helps because everyone thinks someone else will do it. One might expect that the more people present, the more help someone would receive. However, the evidence from real life and from psychological experiments seems in infer that the reverse is true. Latane and Darley found that as group size increased, helping behaviour decreased. The more people there are, the less responsibility each person feels and therefore the less likely help is to be forthcoming.

This has been called the bystander effect – the observation that the presence of others actually decreases the likelihood of help. Piliavin et al. wondered whether this principle actually applied in all situations. After all, there are examples where people, even in large crowds, do sometimes help. Therefore there are likely to be other factors which influence helping behaviour.

The fact that Latane and Darley’s research was conducted in a laboratory may be important and therefore Piliavin et al. designed a field experiment. A further feature of Latane and Darley’s studies was that the victims were not seen, only their cries could be heard. Piliavin et al. suggested this too might be an important variable and so decided to make their victim fully visible. Piliavin et al. set out therefore to identify what other factors may influence helping behaviour.

Helping behaviour as you should remember is similar to but not the same as altruism. The latter refers to situations where a person offers help at a considerable risk to their safety, such as saving a drowning person. We would not consider the work of, for example, a fireman to be truly altruistic because, even though he is risking his life, he is doing it in return for a reward. Altruism involves no expectation of reward. Helping behaviour, on the other hand, involves providing assistance for someone in need at no personal sacrifice.

THE STUDY

THE AIM of the study was to look at bystander intervention in a natural setting and to see if the type of victim – lame (carrying a cane) or drunk, or their racial identity, influenced helping behaviour. The intervention of a model was also used to see if this would influence helping behaviour.

METHOD

Design: A field experiment using participant observation.

Participants: Anyone of approximately 4450 people travelling on the New York 8th Avenue, Independent Subway between 11 am and 3 pm between and June, 1968. The racial mix of travellers was about 55% white and 45% black. The mean number of people in the critical area where the incident took place was 8.5, with the compartment carrying a mean of 43 altogether.

Victims: The victims were all male students, aged between 26 and 35, three were white, one black. All were dressed in the same outfits. In 38 of the trials the victim smelled of alcohol and carried a bottle in a brown paper bag. In 65 of the trials he carried a cane and appeared to be sober. The inequality in the trial numbers was because students did not like playing the role of the drunk victim.

Models (assistants: The models were again all male students, aged between 24 and 29 and all were white. They stood either in the critical area or the adjacent area and were to help either early (70 seconds after collapse) or late (150 seconds after collapse).

Apparatus: The study took part in the carriages of two trains in the New York subway. These trains were chosen because there was a period between stops of 7½ minutes which was enough time for the procedure to be followed. The layout of the carriages was as follows:

Procedure: Groups of 4 students, 2 males and 2 females, got on the train, entering the carriage through

different doors. There were 4 different teams who always worked together. Between them they carried out 103 trials. Sometimes they used carriages in the middle, sometimes the front and sometimes the rear of the

train. However they always used the end compartment as the critical area. The females sat in the adjacent area and recorded data as discretely as possible. Both the ‘victim’ and the ‘model’ would be standing, with the male victim located next to a pole in

the critical area. 70 seconds after the train started moving, the ‘victim’ staggered forward and collapsed on the

floor. He lay, looking up at the ceiling. If no-one came forward to help, the ‘model’ was to come to the assistance of the ‘collapsed

victim’. When the train reached the next stop, the team would get off. They then waited until everyone had left the area before going to the other platform to get on the

next train back.

Data collected by the female observers: The race, sex and time it took helpers to give assistance. Also where the helper had been in relation to the victim. Whether or not participants (potential helpers) had finally decided to help: before or after the

model had gone to the victim’s assistance. Comments made by participants.

RESULTS

One of the main findings was that spontaneous help occurred before the model had chance to act in 93% of the trials. This meant there were insufficient trials for the model effect to be studied.

IN 60% of the 81 trials (the total of the lame and drunk conditions with no model) where the ‘victim’ received spontaneous help, it came from more than one helper.

Help was offered to the lame ‘victim’ significantly more quickly than to the drunk (a median of 5 seconds rather than 109 seconds for the drunk condition).

90% of the spontaneous first helpers were males (although the breakdown of the gender in the critical area was 60% males and 40% females).

There was a very slight (not significant) tendency to same race helping but this was slightly more evident in the drunk condition than the lame condition.

No-one left the compartment in any of the trials but in 21 of the total of 103 trials, 34 people left the critical area, with more leaving in the drunk trials.

There appeared to be no evidence of diffusion of responsibility, with larger groups helping faster than smaller groups.

DISCUSSION

The findings that the lame ‘victims’ were helped on every trial, unlike the drunk ‘victims’, could be explained by the attributions made by the observers who may have seen the drunk as being responsible for his own condition. The lame person may have been helped more quickly and readily because the bystanders felt he could not be blames for being lame i.e. it was not his fault. Even so, it is interesting to note that in the drunk trials 50% of people were helped spontaneously (19/38 cases), which could still be considered a surprisingly high proportion. This may actually be because the enclosed environment made it not only difficult not to help, but also extremely hard to diffuse responsibility.

The fact that first helpers in 90% of cases were male could be explained partially by the comments made by women at the scene: “I wish I could help him –I’m not strong enough,” which may relate to the competence of the potential helper. However it is more likely that women would feel more anxious

about the situation and fear becoming involved, especially with the drunk ‘victim’, who may then attack them. This would mean that the women perceived the cost of helping to be too high.

The tendency for same race helping was insignificant and related to the racial breakdown of travellers on the subway (55% white, 45% black). The situation in the drunk condition might have related to the feelings of fear and blame which are more easily handled if the person is perceived as coming from the same group as the potential helper.

With regard to the potential helpers leaving the critical area, it was noted that more people left when the ‘victim’ was drunk. It was also noted that if people did not help within the first 70 seconds, this proved an even greater encouragement for people to leave the scene.

The reason why diffusion pf responsibility was not evident may have been because there were more potential helpers present than in previous laboratory experiments. All previous research had involved the use of only one participant with the rest being confederates of the experimenter. This meant there was only one potential helper and that potential helper may have looked to everyone else to guide them as to what they should do. Considering all the other people ‘taking part’ did nothing as part of the study, perhaps the phenomenon of ‘pluralistsic ignorance’ could explain the results of past research on this topic. However, in this subway study there were large numbers of potential helpers which may have resulted in more helping behaviour rather than less, and as the group size increased, the potential number of helpers also increased.

Evaluation: One of the biggest problems which makes the results slightly invalid was the difference in

numbers of drunk and lame ‘victims’ (65 compared to 38 trials) There were also far more trials involving white ‘victims’ rather than black (81 compared to 22 trials). Bearing in mind that the racial break down of travellers/participants was 55% white to 45% black this could have had a significant effect on the results.

There are ethical considerations which need to be considered. The researchers involved participants who were unaware that they were taking part in psychological research and therefore not only were they unable to give their informed consent to take part, they were also deceived because they did not know they were part of a field experiment. Many may have felt stressed by the incident, even if they offered help and it was impossible to debrief any of the participants at the end of the study. However the issue of being observed was covered because the observation took place in a public area where individuals can expect to be observed. Confidentiality was also maintained though what are your thoughts on right to withdraw?

Whether travellers on the trains saw more than one trial may be questioned, but one should conclude that this is unlikely because the trials were carried out over a period of 2 months between 11 am and 3 pm. There were also 4 different groups of students carrying out the trials so it is extremely unlikely that any participant saw the same group more than once (though seeing the same incident twice must have looked somewhat suspicious).

Were the 2 female student observers able to see all that went on in the trials? It would seem very likely that they did because there was an average of 43 travellers in the whole compartment and the observers were only focusing on the critical and adjacent areas.

A final evaluative point refers to the ecological validity of the study. A field study such as this must have far greater ecological validity than any of the previous research done on this topic because that was all done in laboratory situations.

Key words:

Pluralistic ignorance: people are not actually aware of all the facts of a situation, perhaps because the situation is ambiguous, and therefore look to each other to define what they should be doing. This may result in them redefining the situation in accordance with other people’s supposed interpretation, even if this goes against what they first thought.

Diffusion of responsibility: people are aware of all the facts but share the responsibility for the event amongst all the observers.

Empathy: empathy involves imagining yourself in someone else’s position and experiencing their feelings as if they are your own.