PILIAVIN

• BACKGROUND case:

  • Kitty Genovese - In 1964 at 3:30 AM a 28-year-old woman was brutally attacked by a knife-wielding man outside her apartment in New York. Her screams scared the man off, but he returned to inflict further injuries. The attacks spanned approximately half an hour. It was reported at the time that of the 38 neighbours who witnessed the attack, none went to help Kitty and just one called the police after around 20 minutes.
• • Bystander apathy - bystanders do not intervene when watching someone be victimized or otherwise in need of help. It can be caused by: 
  • Ambiguity of the situation - We are unsure of the situation (is it an emergency or not?) and therefore we don’t help because we don’t want to embarrass ourselves.
  • Pluralistic ignorance - We look to other people to see how they are reacting – if they (like us) are doing nothing, we also do nothing.
• • Diffusion of responsibility - The more people in a situation, the more people can deal with the problem.
  • Everyone thinks someone else can help and in the end, no one does anything.
• Aim

  • To investigate the effect of different variables on the speed and willingness of bystander intervention on a New York subway
• Method

  • Field experiment with participant observation
  • IV = 
  • Victim responsibility (ill or drunk)
  • Victim race (black or white)
  • Presence of model (70 or 150 seconds)
  • Number of bystanders.
  • DVs =
  • Time taken for first helper
  • Total number who helped
  • Gender/race/position of helpers + comments made. 
• Sample

  • 4,450 male and female passengers on trains in NYC 
  • Opportunity sample of passengers on New York subway on weekdays between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm between April 15 and June 26, 1968. 
• Sample

  • 45% black and 55% white.
  • Confederates played the role of victim & model - aged between 24-35 years from Columbia University
• Procedure

  • 16 researchers in total = 4 teams of 4.
  • Victims were always male; 1 male was black. 
  • Victim 1 - smelled of liquor and carried a liquor bottle wrapped tightly in a brown bag. 
  • Victim 2 - appeared sober and carried a black cane. Acted identically in both conditions
• Procedure

  • Models were always white male aged 24-29 years. 
  • There were 4 model conditions: critical area (early OR late) and adjacent area (early OR late).
• Procedure

  • Observers were always female and recorded DVs. 
  • Critical area observer - noted the race, sex and location of every rider and total number of individuals (as well as their race, sex and location) who came to the victim’s assistance.
  • Adjacent area observer – same as critical area observer. She also recorded the delay of the first helper’s arrival after the victim had fallen (with model or without). 
• Procedure

  • The victim stood near a pole in the critical area. 
  • After 70s he staggered forward and collapsed. Until receiving help he remained supine on the floor looking at the ceiling. If he received no help by the time the train stopped the model helped him to his feet. 
  • At the stop the team waited separately on the platform until other passengers had left the station. They then changed platforms to repeat the process in the opposite direction. 
• Procedure

  • Between 6-8 trials were run on a given day, all using the same ‘victim condition’. 
  • Trains chosen specifically as they had a 7.5 minute journey time with no stops. Therefore the passengers could not escape. 
• Results

  • A person using a cane is more likely to receive help than one who appears drunk (95% vs 50%)
  • Help is given quicker to a person using a cane than one who appears drunk (median latency time for ‘cane’ was 5 seconds - compared to 109 seconds for drunk)
  • 90% of the first helpers were males.
• Results

  • A slight tendency for same race helping especially in the drunk condition. 
  • No diffusion of responsibility was found, in fact response times were faster with larger groups than smaller. 
  • Comments included; “Its for men to help him.” “You feel so bad when you don’t know what to do”
• Conclusion 

  • An individual who appears ill is more likely to receive help than one who appears drunk.
  • Men are more likely than women to help a male victim. 
  • With mixed-race groups, people are more likely to help those of the same race as themselves, particularly if they deem the victim’s situation to be of his own making e.g. drunk. 
• Conclusion 

  • A cost-reward model can predict when help will be forthcoming in an emergency situation 
  • The decision to help in an emergency situation is motivated by a selfish desire to rid oneself of this unpleasant emotional state
  • Action depends on whether the rewards of helping are greater than the costs of not helping
  • HELPING COSTS - takes effort, time, harm to selves
  • HELPING REWARDS - social approval, praise, self-esteem
  • NOT HELPING COSTS - disapproval, blame, guilt
  • NOT HELPING REWARDS - avoids costs (continue with activities, no effort required)
• EVALUATION - Method

  • Strengths:
  • Conducted in natural setting
  • Unaware of study
  • Less chance of demand characteristics
  • Ecologically valid & representative behaviour of real life
• EVALUATION - Method

  • Weaknesses:
  • Difficult to control extraneous variables
  • May be other factors that influence likelihood of helping
  • Lowered internal validity
  • Difficult to replicate
• EVALUATION - Ethics

  • Guidelines broken:
  • No informed consent gathered - however would of increased DCs if knew about study
  • Experienced harm - distressed seeing someone collapse, self-esteem may have been affected if they felt bad that they didn’t help, experienced a conflict between offering help and not
  • Deceived about nature of victim - not really in danger
  • No right to withdraw - couldn’t withdraw data from research (although could physically leave the area)
  • Participants not debriefed when study was over - believe incident to be real
• EVALUATION - Ethics

  • Guidelines adhered:
  • No specific details of participants given - confidentiality adhered to
• EVALUATION - Ethnocentrism

  • Not ethnocentric:
  • New York made up of lots of different cultures and ethnicities - (45% black and 55% white).
  • Ethnocentric:
  • Only 1 city and all lived in same culture
  • Target population represented individualist culture (primarily concerned with personal needs)
  • A collectivist culture emphasises the role of the groups needs - could of shown greater willingness to help
• EVALUATION - Internal validity

  • High:
  • Lots of controls - same journey (7.5 mins), same time of day, victim collapsed in same part of carriage (centre of end section), collapsed same way, victims male & dressed same & acted same
  • Low:
  • Some extraneous variables - if busy carriage victims unable to collapse in same way, possibility passengers witness more than once
• EVALUATION - Population validity

  • High:
  • Generalisable results - large sample & ethically diverse
  • Low:
  • Unrepresentative of children, people who work full time, people who use other modes of transport
  • All people sampled were comfterable in urban environment - in a city it is normal to see beggars & witness someone being injured - more used to offering help/ignoring someone in need
• EVALUATION - Ecological validity

  • High:
  • Scenario true to life - realistic situation in natural location
  • Low:
  • Unusual way in which the victim collapses (fairly dramatic, falling in centre of carriage, lying on floor looking at ceiling)
• EVALUATION - reliability

  • High:
  • 103 trials - consistent effect especially in the cane condition (62/65 trials victims received help)
  • Standardised behaviour - victims acted the same in both conditions
  • Low:
  • Other IVs had less trials - hard to establish whether consistent effects
  • Reliability of observers nor checked and may be unreliable as only one person made each set of observations - can’t check IRR
• EVALUATION - Data

  • Quantitative data collected - easy to compare & analyse conditions. However it gives a simplistic account of bystander behaviour
  • Qualitative date - provided a more personal insight into people sitting it carriages