Psychology Core studies

• Pluralistic ignorance


  When the reason an individual may not help is because they diffuse responsibility
• Diffusion of responsibility


  The responsibility for the situation is spread (diffused) among the people present, so the bystander believes the responsibility is spread out and they feel less personally responsible and are therefore less likely to help
• Bystander apathy


  A bystander may believe that someone else will do what's necessary so there is no need for them to offer assistance
• Since the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 (a woman stabbed to death over a period of 30 minutes in front of a reported 38 unresponsive witnesses), many social psychologists have studied the concept of good Samaritanism
• Research by Darley and Latané (1968) found that bystanders hearing an epileptic fit over earphones, led to those who believed other witnesses to be present being less likely to help the victim than bystanders who believed they were alone
• Subsequent research by Latané and Rodin (1969) on the response to the victim of a fall confirmed this finding and suggested that assistance from bystanders was less likely if they were strangers than if they were acquaintances
• Field experiments conducted by Bryan and Test (1967) showed that individuals are more likely to be good Samaritans if they have just observed another individual performing a helpful act
• Much of the work on victimisation has been conducted in laboratory settings, using non-visual emergency situations
• This study was designed to investigate, under real life conditions, the effect of several variables on helping behaviour
• Field experiment


  • The field situation was the A and D trains of the 8th Avenue New York Subway between 59th Street and 125 Street. The journeys lasted about 7½ minutes.
• Independent variables (IVs)


  • Type of victim (drunk or carrying a cane)
  • Race of victim (black or white)
  • Effect of a model (after 70 or 150 seconds, from the critical or adjacent area), or no model at all
  • Size of the witnessing group (a naturally occurring independent variable)
• Dependent variables (DVs)


  • Frequency of help
  • Speed of help
  • Race of helper
  • Sex of helper
  • Movement out of critical area
  • Verbal comments by bystanders
• Participants were about 4,450 men and women who used the New York subway on weekdays between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm between April 15 and June 26, 1968
• About 45% were black, 55% white
• Procedure


  1. There were 4 teams of 4 researchers: 2 female observers, 2 males – one acting as victim, one the model.

  2. The victims (3 white, 1 black) were all male, General Studies students, aged 26-35 years, and dressed alike. They either smelled of liquor and carried a liquor bottle wrapped tightly in a brown bag or appeared sober and carried a black cane. In all aspects they acted identically in both conditions.

  3. The models (all white) were males aged 24-29 years. There were 4 model conditions: (i) Critical area - early, (ii) Critical area – late, (iii) Adjacent area – early, (iv) Adjacent area – late.

  4. The observers recorded the dependent variables. On each trial one observer noted the race, sex and location of every rider seated or standing in the critical area. In addition she counted the total number of individuals who came to the victim's assistance. She also recorded the race, sex and location of every helper. The second observer coded the race, sex and location of all persons in the adjacent area. She also recorded the latency of the first helper's arrival after the victim had fallen and on appropriate trials, the latency of the first helper's arrival after the programmed model had arrived. Both observers recorded comments spontaneously made by nearby passengers and attempted to elicit comments from a rider sitting next to them.

  5. The victim stood near a pole in the critical area. After about 70 seconds 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 disembarked and waited separately until other passengers had left the station. They then changed platforms to repeat the process in the opposite direction.

  6. Between 6-8 trials were run on a given day, all using the same 'victim condition'.

  7. There were more cane trials than drunk trials which were distributed unevenly across black and white victims because Team 2 violated intructions by running cane rather than drunk trials because the victim "didn't like" playing the drunk! Subsequent student strikes prevented additional trials to correct this.
• Key findings


  • The cane victim received spontaneous help 95% of the time (62/65 trails) compared to the drunk victim 50% of the time (19/38 trials).
  • Overall there was 100% help for the cane victim compared to 81% help for the drunk victim.
  • Help was offered more quickly to the cane victim (a median of 5 seconds compared to 109 seconds delay for the drunk victim).
  • On 49/81 (60%) trials when help was given this was provided by 2 or more helpers.
  • 90% of the first helpers were males.
  • There was 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.
  • More comments were made by passengers in the drunk than the cane condition and most comments were made when no help was given within the first 70 seconds.
• An individual who appears ill is more likely to receive help than one who appears drunk
• With mixed groups of men and women, 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
• There is no strong relationship between number of bystanders and speed of helping when an incident is visible
• When escape is not possible and bystanders are face-to-face with a victim, help is likely to be forthcoming
• Bystanders conduct a cost-reward analysis before deciding whether or not to help a victim
• Subsequent spontaneous help from others was irrespective of race or victim type
• Helping behaviour


  Voluntary actions intended to help others and is a form of prosocial behaviour
• Theories about helping behaviour

  • Kin selection theory: the tendency to perform behaviours that may favour the chance of survival of people with a similar genetic base
  • Reciprocal altruism: the incentive for an individual to help in the present is based on the expectation of the potential receipt in the future
  • Responsibility-prosocial value orientation: a strong influence on helping behaviour is a feeling of and belief in one's responsibility to help, especially when combined with the belief that one is able to help the other person
  • Social exchange theory: people help because they want to gain goods from the one being helped. They calculate rewards and costs of helping others, aiming to maximise the rewards and minimise the costs
• Milgram (1970) proposed that people in urban areas are less helpful than those in rural areas because they cope with stimulus overload differently: urban dwellers restrict their attention mainly to personally relevant events. Strangers, and their situations of need may, therefore, go unnoticed
• Studies conducted in several different countries (including the USA, Saudi Arabia and Sudan) have found that people living in urban areas tend to be less helpful than those in rural settings
• Virtually all of the studies of community differences in helping have focused on the single variable of population size, most often testing the hypothesis that the tendency to help strangers declines as the size of the city increases
• A major cultural difference in helping behaviour is the difference between collectivism and individualism. Collectivists attend more to the needs and goals of the group they belong to, and individualists focus on their own selves. Therefore, collectivists would be more likely to help in group members, but less frequent than individuals to help strangers
• Although many studies have demonstrated that helping rates differ between communities in a single country, almost no systematic cross-cultural research of helping behaviour had been conducted prior to this study
• The aim of this study was to look at helping behaviour, in a wide range of cultures, in large cities around the world in relation to four specific community variables: (i) population size, (ii) economic well-being, (iii) cultural values (individualism-collectivism, simpatia), (iv) walking speed (pace of life)
• This study had three main goals: (i) To determine if a city's tendency to offer non emergency help to strangers is stable across situations over a wide range of cultures, (ii) To obtain a descriptive body of data on helping behaviour across cultures using identical procedures, (iii) To identify country-level variables that might relate to differences in helping
• Three overlapping theoretical explanations for community-level differences in helping behaviour, none of which had been previously considered in cross-cultural research, were tested: (i) economic explanations, (ii) cultural values, (iii) cognitive explanations: pace of life
• Research method


  • This was a cross-cultural quasi experiment carried out in the field that used an independent measures design.
  • The field situation was 23 large cities around the world including Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Calcutta (India), Madrid (Spain), Shanghai (China), Budapest (Hungary), Rome (Italy), New York (USA) and Kuala Lampur (Malaysia).
  • The experiment measured, through the use of a series of correlations of co-variables, helping behaviour in three non emergency situations: (i) whether the victim dropped a pen, (ii) whether the victim had a hurt/injured leg, (iii) whether the victim was blind and trying to cross the street.
  • The dependent variable (DV) was the helping rate of the 23 individual cities (calculated to give each city an Overall Helping Index).
  • The three measures of helping were: (i) whether the victim was helped, (ii) how long it took for the first person to help, (iii) how many people helped.
• This was a cross-cultural quasi experiment carried out in the field that used an independent measures design
• Field situation


  23 large cities around the world including Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Calcutta (India), Madrid (Spain), Shanghai (China), Budapest (Hungary), Rome (Italy), New York (USA) and Kuala Lampur (Malaysia)
• Quasi-experiment


  The independent variable - the people in each city - was naturally occurring
• Experiment measured


  1. Whether the victim dropped a pen

  2. Whether the victim had a hurt/injured leg

  3. Whether the victim was blind and trying to cross the street
• Dependent variable (DV)


  The helping rate of the 23 individual cities (calculated to give each city an Overall Helping Index)
• Measures correlated with


  • Population size
  • Economic well-being
  • Cultural values (individualism-collectivism, simpatia)
  • Pace of life