Psychology - Prosocial Behaviour

• Bystander behavior

  The actions people do or don't take when they witness an emergency situation
• Social factors influencing bystander behavior

  • Presence of others (diffusion of responsibility)
  • Cost of helping (risk, time, embarrassment)
  • Possible rewards (feeling of happiness)
• There are many real-life emergency situations where some people will be the first to help even when everybody else stands by, even risking their own lives to help strangers
• Dispositional factors influencing bystander behavior

  • Similarity to victim
  • Individual's level of expertise in an emergency situation
• Dispositional explanation for bystander behavior can be criticised by looking at Piliavin's research as evidence for aspects of social situation being important
• Piliavin's subway study

  1. Actor pretends to collapse on subway

  2. Actor has bottle of alcohol (drunk) or walking stick (disabled)

  3. Researchers measure time taken for passengers to help
• When the actor appeared disabled, 90% of the time they were helped within 70 seconds. When the actor appeared drunk, they were only helped 50% of the time within 70 seconds
• Piliavin's subway study

  Evidence that person's characteristics influence the likelihood of them being helped
• Piliavin's subway study can be criticised for lack of participant consent and potential emotional harm caused