piliavin

• background

  • a woman name kitty Genovese was murdered in new York, 38 people saw her murder and only one person called the police
  • diffusion of responsibility
  • bystander apathy - we think someone else will help
• aim - test bystander apathy in a real life setting and investigate if there are any certain characteristics of the victim which influence helping behaviour
• hypothesis

  • people who are seen as responsible for their behaviour are less likely to receive help
  • people are more likely to help someone of their own race
  • people are more likely to help if someone else is seen to be helping
  • the larger the group the less helping behaviour
• method

  • field experiment
  • iv - type of victim, race of victim, size of witnessing group, presence of model who helps after 70/150s in their adjacent or critical area
  • dv - number of people who helped, time taken to help, gender of helper, race of helper, location of helper, if any comments were made
  • female observers used participant observation
• sample

  • 4450 men and women
  • opportunity sampling
• procedure

  1. the victims were always male but sometimes a black victim was used, the drunk victim smelled of alcohol and carried a brown paper bag, the cane victim carried a cane
  2. the victim waited for 70s after leaving the station before collapsing, one observer noted down the demographics of all people inside the subway in the critical area, the other the same in the adjacent area
• results

  • the cane victim was helped 100% of the time in the no model condition, 50% in the drunk condition
  • 90% of helpers were male
  • no diffusion of responsibility was found
  • the women would make comments about the drunk victim saying they were not strong enough to help
  • 87% of the time the cane victim didn't need the models help
• conclusions

  • suggested that a cost-reward analysis can be done to explain this, the cost of helping may include harm or embarrassment but the rewards include praise
• strengths

  • representative sample
  • controlled - same victim used each time
• weakness

  • Opportunity sampling misses' certain personality types. Lower validity. 
  • Unaware of personality traits so cannot make conclusions. Lower usefulness.
  • Ethical guidelines not strictly followed- no protection from harm or debrief or informed consent, low reliability.
• ethics

  • no protection from harm
  • no debrief
  • no informed consent
  • no right to withdraw