4- Levine et al: SOCIAL Flashcards
Background
Research on helping behaviour.
Aim(s)
To investigate how the ‘personality’ of a city might be related to helping behaviour in non-emergency situations
(by looking at a broader range of cities than previously studied).
3 main questions:
1) Is helping of strangers a cross-culturally meaningful characteristic of a place?
2) Does helping of strangers vary cross-culturally?
3) What community characteristics are related to helping of strangers across cultures?
Q3 -> there are 3 possible overlapping explanations:
- Economic - cities with good economic health may offer greater helping, or they may be more self-focused.
- Cultural - Collectivist cultures may offer greater helping to others, though this may not extend to strangers.
- Cognitive - The fast pace of life of a city means people may experience sensory overload and therefore screen out behaviours such as someone needing help.
Design
(Method)
1) Quasi experiment
(IV - people in each city - was naturally occurring).
2) Independent measures design.
3) Correlation - to analyse some of the results.
4) Cross-cultural research.
IV
(Method)
The people in each city
DV
(Method)
The helping rate calculated for each of the 23 individual cities.
Sample
(Method)
The unit of analysis was the countries / cities.
The researchers selected 23 countries, spead across the continents.
It was an opportunity sample determined by which countries the researchers had links with.
Within each country the researchers selected the largest city or another major city.
Within each city, 50 Ps were tested.
Their scores were combined to produce an overall helping rate for the country / city.
Experimenters
(Method)
Data was collected by a variety of assistants who were mainly interested, responsible students returning to their home country for the summer.
To control for gender effects all experimenters were male.
Community variables
(Method)
The four co-variables that were investigated in terms of their relationship to helping were:
1) Population size:
Using the United Nations Demographic Yearbook.
2) Economic indicator - using purchasing power parity (PPP).
3) Cultural values - 6 experts rated each country on individualism-collectivism. There was high inter-rater reliability of .92.
4) Pace of life - using walking speed as an indicator.
Materials and apparatus
1) Pen
2) Leg brace
3) Glasses
4) Magazines
Procedure
1) Data was collected in each of the 23 cities. This was always done in the main downtown areas during the main business hours on clear days during the summer months in the years 1992 - 1997.
2) Potential Ps were selected from any approaching pedestrians who were over 17 years of age and were not physically disabled, very old or carrying packages.
3) The actual Ps were then selected randomly, usually by approaching the second potential Ps who crossed a predetermined line.
THREE MEASURES OF HELPING BEHAVIOUR:
4) Measure 1: Dropped pen.
An experimenter walked at a moderate pace toward a solitary pedestrian. At about 10 feet from the Ps, the experimenter accidentally dropped his pen behind him.
-> A total of 424 people were approached. Ps were scored as having helped if they called back to the experimenter that he had dropped the pen and / or returned the pen to the experimenter.
5) Hurt leg.
Experimenter walked with a limp and wore an obvious leg brace. The experimenter accidently dropped and tried to pick up a pile of magazines as they came within 20 feet of a passing pedestrian.
-> A total of 493 people were approached. Helping was defined as offering to help and / or beginning to help without offering.
6) Measure 3: Helping a blind person across the street.
Experimenters wore dark glasses and held a white cane, and waited at a street corner until someone offered to help. A trial was terminated after 60s or when the light turned red, whichever occurred first, after which the experimenter walked away from the corner.
-> A total of 281 trials were conducted with an apparent blind person at a street corner. Helping was scored if Ps informed the experimenter that the light was green.
Results
There was some consistency across measures of helping
-> the correlation between dropped pen and blind person scores was SIGNIFICANT (p<0.10) and between hurt leg and dropped pen (p<0.05).
2) There were NO gender differences.
3) A standard score was calculated for each country / city for each measure of helping. The 3 scores were averaged to give a total standard score for the country / city.
-> E.g., the top 2 scores were Brazil (1.66) and Costa Rica (1.52) and the 2 lowest scores were USA (-1.74) and Malaysia (-2.04).
Results
Relationship of community variables to helping
4) Economic productivity:
The only significant correlation was between economic productivity (PPP) and overall helping (p<0.15).
This was a NEGATIVE CORRELATION, i.e., cities with lower economic productivity were more helpful.
5) Walking speed:
There was a small POSITIVE CORRELATION (not statistically sig.) between walking speed and overall helping (people in faster cities were less helpful).
6) Individualist countries were slightly less helpful (not statistically sig.).
7) Population size had no correlation with helpfulness.
8) Simpatia cultures (Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico and Spain) were significantly MORE helpful than non-simpatia (p<0.02).
Conclusion(s)
1) The data provides some support for the view that big cities do have a ‘personality’ and some cities may have more of a ‘helping personality’ than others.
2) To gain further understanding a multitude of variables need to be tracked.
3) The results challenge a biological view of altruism as they indicate that cultural variables may be significant.
