levine

• simpatia

  spanish cultural value of helpfulness
• background of levine

  research on helping behaviour:

  • are ppl more helpful in some envs than others?- urban vs rural / large vs small cities
  • research shown pop size of city has small association w help rates- may be bc cities have other characteristics than size
• aims of levine (1)

  • Investigate how personality of city might be related to helping behaviour in non emergency situations by looking at broader range of cities than prev studied
• Aims (2)-what were the main questions to be answered

  1. Is help of strangers a cross culturally meaningful thing?
  2. Does helping of strangers vary cross culturally?
  3. What community characteristics are related to helping of strangers across cultures?

  In relation to q3 there's 3 possible explanations:

  • Economic- cities w good economic health may offer greater help or be more self focused
  • Cultural- collectivist cultures may offer greater helping to others though this may not be extended to strangers. Simpatia may be more helpful
  • Cognitive- fast pace of life of a city means Pol may experience sensory overload and therefore screen out behaviors such as someone needing help
• Design of Levine

  • quasi experiment bc iv-ppl in city- was naturally occurring
  • Dv- helping rat calculated for each of cities
  • Independent measures design
  • Correlation used to analyze some of the results
  • Example of cross cultural research
• Sample of Levine

  • 23 countries spread across continents
  • Basically opportunity sample determined by what countries researchers had links with
  • Researchers selected largest city within country
  • Abt 50 ppts tested in each country
• Experimenters In Levine

  • data collected by variety of assistants who were mainly interested, students returning to home country
  • All experimenters male to control gender effects
• Community variables in Levine

  4 Co variables that were investigated in terms of relationship to helping were:

  • pop size- using united nations demographic yearbook
  • Economic indicator- using purchasing power parity
  • Cultural values- 6 experts rated each country on individualism-collectivism. There was high inter rates reliability of 92
  • Pace of life-using walking speed as an indicator
• Material /apparatus

  • experimenters needed pen, leg brace, glasses and magazines
• Procedure of dropped pen condition- Levine

  • Experimenters walked at a steady speed towards a solitary pedestrian and dropped the pen in full view.
  • 424 ppl approached
• Procedure of Hurt leg condition-levine

  • waked with limp and wore leg brace, dropped pile of magazines within 20feet of pedestrian
  • 493 ppl approached
• procedure of helping blind person condition


  • experimenters wore dark glasses & held white cane
  • waited at a street corner until someone offered help
  • a trial was terminated after 60 secs or when the light turned red, whichever occurred first
  • 281 trials conducted
• procedure of levine

  1. 23 cities, study done in main downtown areas, during business hours on clear days during summer months
  2. years 1992-1997
  3. ppts selected from any approaching pedestrians over 17yrs and not physically disabled or carrying packages
  4. ppts selected randomly usually by approaching usually by crossing predetermined line - systematic sampling
• results of levine

  1. some consistency across measures off helping- the correlation between dropped pen & blind person scores was sig (p<0.10) and between hurt leg and dropped pen (p<0.05)
  2. no gender differences
  3. standard scores calculated top 2 scores= brazil (1.66) and costa rica (1.52) and lowest scores= (-1.74) and malaysia (-2.04)
• results of leveine

  1. economic productivity- only sig correlation was between economic productivity and helping rate (P<0.15) this was neg correlation- eg. cities w lower economic productivity were more helpful
  2. walking speed- small pos correlation between speed and helping (faster less likely to help)
  3. individualist countries were slightly less helpful
  4. pop size had no correlation w helpfulness
  5. simpatia cultures (brazil, costa rica, mexico and spain) sig more helpful than non simpatia (p<0.02)
• conclusions of levine

  • data provides some support for the view that big cities do have a 'personality'
  • to gain further understanding a multitude of variables need to be tracked
  • results challenge a biological view of altruism as they indicate that cultural variables may be sig
• research methods of levine

  • quasi experi
  • range techniques to assess helping behaviour eg. correlation

  strengths:

  • the 3 measures could clearly be operationalised and standardised- each designed so was clear person needed help. this was especially important when diff teams of researchers conducting studies in diff countries

  weakness:

  • study only looked at 1 kind of helpfulness - superficial kind of helpfulness-> these results do not generalise to kind of altruism that enhance survival and be naturally selected
  • pace of life was measure by observe how quick ppl walked- rather crude measure of pace of life- making any conclusions abt pace of life somewhat meaningless
• sampling bias of levine

  strengths:

  • wide range of diff cultures were sampled- enabling conclusions to be drawn abt cultural differences, prev research only looked at 2/3

  weakness:

  • 23 countries considered small by researchers
  • may be that too many individualist cultures included or too many economically healthy countries
  • small sample makes harder to detect trends
• reliability of levine

  • 23 diff experimenters - questions consistency
  • however techniques for measuring helping behaviour were carefully standardised- trained by levine to ensure reliability
  • however it is possible there were local variations which would reduce the reliability of measurement
• types of data in levine

  • quantitative - number of ppl who helped
  • gives no insight to why people behaved the way they did
  • would have been possible to question pedestrian after partic those who didn't stop-qualitative- may have shown us whether pace of life was issue or other factors
• validity of levine

  • are we really testing helping behaviour?- everyday favours
  • limited sample reduces ability to generalise results to cultures all round world
  • little attempt to control evs eg. diff confederate used at diff locations and individual characteristics may have explained helping rates rather than action
• ethical considerations of levine

  • feild study- informed consent
  • some of the incidents may have created distress