Levine Flashcards
1
Q
What was Levine looking at?
A
Cultural differences in urban/rural areas, population density, collectivist/individualistic cultures
2
Q
What was the aim?
A
- To investigate helping behaviours in a wide range of cultures, in large cities around the world in relation to 4 community variables
3
Q
What were the 4 community variables?
A
- Population size
- Economic well-being
- Cultural values (individualistic/collectivist/sympatia)
- Walking speed (pace of life)
4
Q
What is the System Overload Theory?
A
- People in urban areas are less helpful than rural, experience greater sensory overload, individual isolates attention to things that matter to them
5
Q
What is pro-social value orientation?
A
- Feel a responsibility to help because you are able to
6
Q
What were the main questions Levine wanted to answer?
A
- To determine if a city’s tendency to offer non-emergency help to strangers is stable across situations in which people need help
- To investigate if helping strangers varies cross-culturally
- To identify county level variables might relate to different helping behaviours (correlation)
7
Q
What were the research methods?
A
- Quasi experiment
- Independent measures design
- Correlation
8
Q
What was the sample?
A
- 23 countries (large cities)
- Most helpful - Rio de Janerio
- Least helpful - New York City
9
Q
What were the IV’s?
A
- dropping pen
- hurt leg
- blind person
10
Q
What was the DV?
A
- Helping rates across 23 large cities with 3 IV’s correlated with 4 community variables
11
Q
What happened in the ‘dropping a pen’ IV?
A
- standardised 15 paces per 10 seconds, walked towards solitary person passing opposite, dropped pen behind & continued walking.
- scored as a ‘helped’ behaviour if pen is returned.
- 214 males, 210 females sampled
12
Q
What happened in the ‘hurt leg’ IV?
A
- walked with a heavy limp, large visible leg brace, dropped large pile of magazines & struggled to pick them up.
- scored as a ‘helped’ behaviour if physically helped.
- 253 males, 240 females sampled
13
Q
What happened in the ‘blind person’ IV?
A
- dark glasses and white cane, waited for help to cross, stopped after 60 seconds if no one came to help.
- scored as a ‘helped’ behaviour if ppt informed blind person that lights were green.
14
Q
What were the results of the inter-correlations (stability)?
A
- some consistency between measures of helping, all positive, not significant, relatively stable across conditions.
- if you get help as a blind person, you can predict you can get help with a hurt leg.
- no significant gender differences
15
Q
What were the results of the correlation?
A
- Low correlations between community variables and helping behaviours
- Only reliable measure was between PPP (purchasing power parity) and helping behaviours
- Cities that are more helpful tend to have lower PPP
- No correlation reached significant levels
- Population size had no correlation with helpfulness
16
Q
What were the results of sympatia?
A
- Higher levels of helping behaviours in countries that have a culture of sympatia (Brazil)
-> Encourage a culture of being nice, agreeable, good natured.
17
Q
What were the results of the System Overload Theory?
A
- In fast paced cities, helping behaviours not down to pace of life, probably other individual variables related to economic wealth
18
Q
What were some conclusions?
A
- Helping of strangers is a cross-cultural characteristic of a place
- Large cross-cultural variations in helping rates
- Helping across countries is inversely related to a country’s economic productivity
- Countries with a tradition of sympatia are, on average, more helpful
- Values of collectivist and individualistic cultures are unrelated to helping behaviours
