Bystander effect: Social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present.
Bystander: Anyone who is present at an incident but not directly involved.
Diffusion of responsibility: When groups of people witness an emergency together and everyone assumes a little amount of responsibility for helping. The bigger the group – less responsibility on individual – less likely someone is going to help.
Altruism: Performing a selfless act.
Intrinsic rewards: Rewarding yourself, being proud of yourself …
Extrinsic rewards: Recognition, praise from others…
Pluralistic ignorance: The tendency for people in a group to misunderstand each other about an emergency.
Exchange theory: looking at costs and benefits of helping.
Background:
Kitty Genovese stabbed to death in New York in 1964. Several people heard her cries of help and saw her struggling, nobody helped her.
Aim:
To investigate the factors affecting helping behaviour
There were factors which were studied:
- The type of victim (drunk or ill)
- The race of victim (black or white)
- The speed of helping
- The frequency of helping
- The race of the helper
- Effect of the group size
- Effect of Modelling.
Sample:
4550 passengers (unsolicited participants)
Approximately 43 in each carriage
45% Black and 55% white
Travelling a stretch of the New York underground – 11am – 3pm from April 15th to June 26t:h
Method:
- Field Experiment
- Participant Observation
- Snapshot study
Independent Variables:
- Victim’s responsibility: carrying a cane (ill = low responsibility) or carrying a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag and smelling of alcohol (drunk = high responsibility).
- Victim’s race: black or white.
- Presence of a model: When the model helped the victim.
- Number of bystanders: Number of people watching.
Dependent variable:
- Time takes for first passengers to help.
- Total number of passengers who helped.
- Gender, race and location of every helper.
- Time taken for the first passenger to offer help after the model has assisted.
Controls:
- How many seconds into the journey the victim collapsed.
- Location of observers.
- Way they were dressed
- The time gap between two stations.
Procedure:
A team of 4 experimenters acted out the emergency.
4 teams who worked together.
2 female confederates = recorded data.
2 male confederates = played victims and helpers.
Victims:
- Aged in late 20s
- Three white, one black
- Black jackets and casual
- Acted drunk or ill.
Models:
- Aged 24-29
- White
- Used to see if others would copy the behavior.
- 5 conditions:
Critical area: helped after 70 seconds
Critical area: helped after 150 seconds
Adjacent area: helped after 70 seconds
Adjacent area: helped after 150 seconds
No model: didn’t help.
Observers:
- 2 in each team
- White females
- Sat in adjacent area
- Observer 1: recorded race, sex and location of passengers in the critical area.
- Observer 2: recorder race, sex and location of passenger in the adjacent area. In charge of stopwatch.
- Noted qualitative data – comments and actions of people.
Teams entered through different doors, victim would perform collapse 70 seconds into journey. Model carried out the five conditions. Observers were sat in adjacent area and carried out the observations in secret (participant observers).
Results:
- Cane victim – spontaneous help in 95% of time.
- Drunk victim – spontaneous help in 50% of time.
- More comments when drunk condition happened.
- 90% first helpers were males.
- Closer to the victim, more likely help would be given.
- Black victim received help less quickly than white ones, especially when drunk.
Conclusions:
- Ill person more likely to receive help than a drunk person.
- Men are more likely to help other men than women are.
- People more likely to help their ethnic group, especially when drunk.
- The longer incident goes on – less likely people are to help, more likely for people to leave, more likely they are to discuss incident.
- No strong relationship between size of group and likelihood of helping. No support for diffusion of responsibility – correlation is positive.
Ethics:
- No consent
- Deception
- No debriefing
- No right to withdraw
- Confidentiality was kept.
Strengths:
- High ecological validity: The experiment was very realistic because of the natural setting and believable incident.
- Generalizable: The sample was very large and consisted of random and different people. Therefore, it can be representative of New Yorkers and be applied further.
- In depth data: Both types of data were recorded which allowed statistical analysis.
Weaknesses:
- Lack of control: Since it was a field study conducted in a natural setting, the experimenters had no control over external factors. Therefore, other variables could have affected the passengers’ actions and will to help.
- Hard to replicate: The procedure could be replicated the same way but the same participants would not be found and used again.
- Ethics: Participants were not asked if they wanted to be part of the experiment as well as given the right to leave if they felt uncomfortable. Furthermore, the situation could have caused distress to some people.
- Participants had no way out of the carriage so they may have felt forced to help the person since they were in a restricted place.
- Sample: People who worked between 9 to 5 were not included in the study therefore it may have not represent the entire population.
CIE A Level Psychology 