helping in emergencies

Question 1

What is the significance of the Kitty Genovese case?

Answer 1

Inspired by the Kitty Genovese Case which grabbed headlines due to the reported apathy of bystanders, claiming ‘37 saw murder and didn’t call the police’.
Many argued that it was a consequence of the alienation involved in city living.
However Latante and Darley believed that it was a consequence of everyday social psychological processes that mean the presence of other people inhibits helping behaviour.

Question 2

What is the bystander effect?

Answer 2

The more people present in an emergency, the less likely it is that any one individual helps.
This a robust psychological phenomenon explained through Latante and Darley’s 5 step model of the helping process.
It shows that the presence of other people influences a person’s decision at each stage to not help.

Question 3

What is Latante and Darley’s 5 step model of the helping process?

Answer 3

Potential helper must notice event
Must interpret event as an emergency
Must take personal responsibility for intervening
Must work out how to help individual in danger
Implement intervention

Question 4

What is the aim of Latante and Darley’s (1968) Smoke Experiment?

Answer 4

To investigate the presence of other people impacting decision making steps one (noticing an event) and two (interpreting it as an emergency).

Question 5

What was the experimental design of Latante and Darley’s (1968) Smoke Experiment?

Answer 5

Participants were recruited for a study of the problems of urban life
filled out a questionnaire in a waiting room
Condition: alone or group of 3 naive participants or group with two passive confederates
Simulated smoke starts to enter through air vent
Investigators recorded the time taken to notice the smoke and to go and get help.
By 6 minutes the whole room was full of smoke.

Question 6

What were the results of Latante and Darley’s (1968) smoke experiment?

Answer 6

Noticing the emergency (step 1)
63% alone notice within 5 seconds
26% in group notice within 5 seconds
Getting help (step 2)
The majority of participants in the alone condition get help within 4 minutes
The majority of participants in the group condition took more than 6 minutes to get help
Repeated the experiment with confederates who are passive to the emergency. In this condition the majority of participants do not respond to the emergency at all.
From a cumulative frequency plot it can be seen that for every point in time after the smoke appeared, a substantially higher proportion of people in the alone condition had reported the smoke than individuals in either 2 condition

Question 7

How have the results of Latante and Darley’s (1968) smoke experiment been interpreted?

Answer 7

when bystanders are present individuals scan their environment less and so take longer to notice emergencies.
In the presence of passive bystanders they are unlikely to report the emergency and rationalise it as non-dangerous.
This is due to pluralistic ignorance.

Question 8

What is pluralistic ignorance?

Answer 8

The presence of other people make it less likely that ambiguous situations are interpreted as an emergency
Each individual tries to appear calm whilst simultaneously looking to others to see how to respond.
Thus they observe other people not panicking and essentially deceive each other that the event is less serious and not an emergency so they are unreactive.
A cognitive mechanism

Question 9

How have Latante and Darley’s smoke experiments been criticised?

Answer 9

The ambiguity of the smoke stimuli has been said to have exaggerated results.
Post-experimental interviews with participants who did not identify the smoke as an emergency reported that they believed it was part of the experiment to simulate an urban environment or an issue with the air conditioning.
Technically these rationalisations of the smoke are valid as the smoke actually was not harmful so the participants responded correctly.
Regardless, this does not account for the significant difference between the figures from the alone and group conditions.
Therefore the notion of pluralist ignorance holds.
Alternatively it has been argued that togetherness reduces fear and that subjects felt more able to deal with the event of a fire as a consequence of the presence of other people than alone.
However this is not consistent with post experimental interviews because subjects reported deciding that the smoke was not indicative of fire.

Question 10

What is the effect of diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 10

Step 3 hypothesis: the presence of other people make it less likely that any one intervenes, whereas if there is only one person then the pressure to intervene is focused on that person.
If other people are present an individual is less likely to take personal responsibility.
A cognitive mechanism

Question 11

What is the aim of Latante and Darley’s (1968) seizure experiment?

Answer 11

aims to investigate the effect of other people on making the step three decision (taking personal responsibility for helping).

Question 12

What was the procedure for Latante and Darley’s (1968) seizure experiment?

Answer 12

Participants recruited to allegedly take part in discussions of personal problems associated with college life.
They are sat in individual cubicles and communicate via an unmonitored intercom system to ‘minimise embarrassment’
Microphones only operate for each individuals two minute turn eliminating the opportunity to discuss who should intervene but they do know other people are present.
The naive participant listens to a series of pre-recorded tapes they believe are genuine.
The first speaker talks of struggling with seizures
On the second turn the same speaker becomes loud and incoherent as they explicitly have a seizure, they ask for help and say they are going to die and then there is silence.
Three conditions
Two person group - the participant and person having seizure
Three person group - participant, seizure and bogus participant.
Six person group - participant, seizure and 4 bogus participants.
Investigators record how long the real participant takes to leave the cubical to get help after hearing the seizure.

Question 13

What were the results of Latante and Darley’s (1968) seizure experiment?

Answer 13

85% help in group of 2
65% help in group of 3
⅓ help in group of 6
The more people present, the less likely an individual is to take personal responsibility to help.

Question 14

What is evaluation apprehension?

Answer 14

When in public there is an audience for one’s actions to be taken into account.
Risk of embarrassment and ridicule constrain actions particularly as it appears foolish to react unnecessarily.
This may explain the discrepancy between individual’s belief that they would help in emergencies and their actual responses.
Involves a cost-reward process
People are worried about how other bystanders will evaluate them if they get their helping attempt wrong.
The presence of other people who can monitor an intervention decreases the likelihood of helping due to fears of negative judgement if something goes wrong.

Question 15

What was the aim of Latante and Darley’s evaluation apprehension studies?

Answer 15

to investigate the effect of other people on an individual making the step 5 decision to implement helping action.

Question 16

What was the procedure for Latante and Darley’s evalutaion apprehension studies?

Answer 16

Witness a victim receiving an apparent electric shock over CCTV
Conditions
Participant is alone
Participant can see a bystander who can see the participant

Question 17

What were the finding of Latante and Darley’s evaluation apprehension studies?

Answer 17

Participants are least likely to offer help when they know someone else is around who can monitor their response.

Question 18

What is prosocial behaviour?

Answer 18

voluntary actions that are intended to help or benefit another individual or group of individuals.

Question 19

What was the aim of Levine et al.’s (2005) prosocial behaviour studies?

Answer 19

to investigate the correlation between social identity and helping.

Question 20

What was the procedure in Levine et al.’s prosocial behaviour (2005) studies?

Answer 20

Researchers recruited students who were Manchester United fans for a study supposedly about ‘football clubs and their fans’.
Participants had to write about how strongly they support their team and respond to a questionnaire about their level of group identity in order to increase the salience of their social identity as a Man U fan.
They were told that the second part was to assess their reactions to a video about teams, supporters and crowd behaviour in a separate building on campus.
While walking across, participants see a staged accident of a jogger falling and hurting their ankle.
Their reactions were recorded discretely by an onlooking experimenter.
Condition: manipulate the social identity of the victim
Man united shirt
Liverpool shirt
Red sports top
Repeated the study but instead write about how much they watch and enjoy football and complete questionnaires about their level of identification with football fans in general. Increases the salience of their social identity as football fans.

Question 21

What were the results of Levine et al.’s (2005) prosocial behaviour studies?

Answer 21

Salient social identity
Man U fan
90% of participants helped when wearing a united shirt - shared social identity.
30% helped when wearing either a Liverpool or red shirt - not an example of prejudice
Football fan
No significant difference between the level of helping when wearing man u or liverpool shirt - about 80%
Red shirt is about 25%

Question 22

How have Levine et al.’s (2005) studies been interpreted?

Answer 22

Sharing a common social identity increases the prospect of helping.
The social identity that is salient can be manipulated in order to increase the prospect of helping someone who might otherwise not be helped.

Question 23

What motivates people to help?

Answer 23

Debate centered around whether people help because of altruism or acting in self-interest.
Motivated by social consequences such as congratulations or reduced disapproval.
Motivated by personal consequences such as increased self-esteem, happiness for the victim or to remove the unpleasant feelings associated with witnessing someone else’s suffering.
Motivated by altruism, where the individual is helping for its own sake because they want the other person to be in a better situation (Batson, 1991)

Question 24

What was the aim of Batson’s (1981) Elaine experiments?

Answer 24

Batson argued that helping can sometimes be altruistic
If they are, they are directed by the end-state goal of increasing the other’s welfare and are not avoiding negative personal costs.
If the act of helping is motivated by avoiding negative personal costs then reducing these costs should reduce helping.
He hypothesised that empathy leads to altruistic rather than egoistic motivation to help.

Question 25

What was the experimental procedure for Batson’s (1981) Elaine experiments?

Answer 25

Female participants were told that their co-participant Elaine had been assigned to receive electric shocks.
Watch Elaine show negative responses during the first two trials and tell the experimenter that she disliked the shocks because of a childhood experience with an electric fence.
The experimenter offers participants the chance to trade places with Elaine for the final 8 trials.
Conditions
Ease of escape:
Easy escape: told they would observe Elaine over CCTV for only 2 of her 10 trials
No escape: told they would observe Elaine over CCTV for all 10 trails during all 10.
Similarity
Similar interests: shown a questionnaire indicates Elaine has similar interests and values to them (implies shared social identity, so particiaptns should care more about how she feels and her experience.)
Dissimilar interests: shown a questionnaire indicating Elaine has different interests and values to her. Should not have strong empathy, therefore removing the motivation to help to reduce the discomfort they experience by watching Elaine suffer.

Question 26

What were the results of Batson’s (1981) Elaine experiments?

Answer 26

Dissimilar condition:
Individuals help more when escape is difficult than when it is easy.
Suggests that participants helping is egoistically motivated.
Similar condition
Helping is higher regardless of ease of escape
Even when escape is easy participants still help
Suggests that helping is altruistically motivated.

Question 27

How have the results of Batson’s (1981) Elaine experiments been interpreted?

Answer 27

Empathy-altruism Hypothesis
High empathic emotion results in altruistic motivation
Low empathic emotion results in egoistic motivation.

Question 28

How have Batson’s (1981) Elaine experiments been criticised?

Answer 28

Only two experiments were conducted and these were both produced in the same lab.
Results need to be demonstrated as repeatable before sound conclusions can be drawn.
It is legitimate to suggest that empathic motivation for helping may be truly altruistic.
Cialdini: helping behaviour is motivated by the desire to relieve one’s own sadness for the witness so Batson’s results reflect increased sadness when people empathise with victims.

Question 29

What is Cialdini’s (1987) negative-state-relief model?

Answer 29

Argues that all helping behaviour is motivated by the desire to relieve one’s own sadness from witnessing a help situation.
If you can relieve your own sadness in a way that does not involve helping, then levels of helping will decrease.
Rather than increasing altruistic motivation, high empathy makes one’s own sadness for the witness feel worse.

Question 30

What is the aim of Cialdini’s mood-fixing experiments?

Answer 30

to investigate whether participants will still help as much if they know it will not relieve their own sadness.

Question 31

What is the experimental design of Cialdini’s mood-fixing experiments?

Answer 31

Cialdini recruited participants to allegedly investigate different listening attitudes to material for a college radio show.
Participants listen to a radio story about a first year student who has broken her legs and needs help going over lecture notes.
Manipulations
Empathy
Participants instructed to adopt an objective attitude
Participants instructed to imagine how the other person feels.
Mood-fixing (whether participants think helping is going to relieve their sadness)
Given placebo drug which supposedly influences information processing with the side effect of mood fixing (therefore they think helping won’t improve how they’re feeling)
No mood fixing.
Record participants responses to being asked to help the student, making them commit by giving their details and how many hours a week.

Question 32

what were the results of Cialdini’s (1987) mood-fixing experiment?

Answer 32

More helping in high empathy condition, but not when participants believe that their mood is fixed.
This is presented as evidence that helping even when empathising strongly isn’t motivated by altruism rather than to make yourself feel better.

Question 33

How has Cialdini’s negative-state-relief model been criticised?

Answer 33

Some argue that Cialdini’s approach is overly cynical; the fact that people feel better from helping implies that they do care about other people’s feelings and suffering.
The difference is the mechanism driving this behaviour not the motivation.

Question 34

What did Beaman’s (1978) study on helping find?

Answer 34

Attending a lecture on Latante and Darley’s research increases helping.
Participants were confronted with a confederate sprawled against the wall in an unrelated experiment two weeks after the lecture.
A second confederate poses as another participant failing to offer help - illustrating the bystander effect.
Participants were significantly more likely to help if the lecture was about the bystander effect than another unrelated social psychology topic.
42.5% vs 25%