Piliavin's subway study

• Aim to investigate Bystander behavior in a more natural setting and if certain characteristic of a victim would effect help rates
• Method - 4 student researchers boarded a New York subway train. One male member always played the role of the 'victim'. The victim stood next to the pole in the middle of a critical area, an collapsed after 70 seconds, and remained there until help
• Method - on 38 trials the victim held a bottle of alcohol and smelled of alcohol. on 65 trials, he appeared sober and carried a cane. In all other aspects, the victim was identical between trials
• Method - 2 of the researchers acted as observers who noted down behaviors. The last researcher would help the victim, if no help was offered after a further 70 - 150 seconds
• Results - The victim when holding a cane was helped 95% of the time, whilst the drunk was only helped 50% of the time.
• Results - help was much faster for the victim with the cane, who was helped 87% of the time after 70 seconds, but the drunk was only helped 17% of the time after 70 seconds
• Conclusion - certain characteristics do affect prosocial behavior and whether victims would receive help when needed.
• Strength - high realism. It was a covert observation, meaning the participants do not know they are being studied, so the results have high validity, as it shows peoples true reactions / behaviors
• Weakness - unique characteristics. Whilst yes the sample size was large,they were all residents of New York City, giving the results possible ethno-centricity, as i follows behaviors of New York people, and this could be different elsewhere
• Strength -study gathered qualitative data and had inter-observer reliability. The qualitative data allowed for researcher to explain why behaviors happened, and the inter-observer reliability was due to 2 researchers gathering results, increasing reliability