Levine: Responses to People in Need (Social)

Question 1

What was Levine’s study published?

Answer 1

2001

Question 2

What is one theory Levine’s study was based on?

Answer 2

Milgram (1970) proposed that people in urban areas are less helpful than those in rural areas because they cope with stimulus overload differently. Urban dwellers restrict their attention mainly to personally relevant events so strangers and their situations of need may go unnoticed.

Question 3

What is the background to Levine’s study?

Answer 3

-Piliavin’s study looked at helping behaviour in an emergency situation in New York. Wanted to look at non-emergency helping behaviour
-A major cultural difference in helping behaviour is the difference between collectivism and individualism

Question 4

What four community variables did Levine’s study aim to look at?

Answer 4

-Population size
-Economic well being
-Cultural values (individualism-collectivism, simpatia)
-Walking speed (pace of life)

Question 5

What were the three main aims of Levine’s study?

Answer 5

-To establish if the tendency of people to help strangers is universal or dependent on the characteristics of a city
-To test whether the helping of strangers varies between cultures
-To investigate whether particular characteristics of a community, such as city size, are associated with the tendency to help strangers

Question 6

What were the three theoretical explanations for helping behaviour in previous research that were tested in Levine’s study?

Answer 6

-Economic explanations
-Cultural values
-Cognitive explanations (pace of life)

Question 7

What was the research method and design in Levine’s study?

Answer 7

Quasi experiment (as the IV was the people which was naturally occurring) in the field that used an independent measures design.

Question 8

What was the field situation in Levine’s study?

Answer 8

23 large cities around the work including Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Rome, and New York

Question 9

What were the 3 non emergency situations in Levine’s study?

Answer 9

-Victim dropped a pen and didn’t notice
-Victim with an injured leg dropped magazines and struggled to pick them up
-Victim was blind and trying to cross the street

Question 10

What was the sample for Levine’s study?

Answer 10

-Participants were large cities in each of the 23 countries
-For the dropped pen and hurt leg situations, only individuals walking alone were selected
-Children, disabled people, old people, and those carrying packages were excluded
-Participants were selected by approaching the second potential person who crossed a predetermined line
-This is random sampling

Question 11

Where and when was data collected for Levine’s study?

Answer 11

Each of the three helping measures and the walking speed measure were administered in 2 or more locations, in main downtown areas, during main business hours, on clear days, during the summer months of one or more years between 1992 and 1997

Question 12

Who were the experimenters in Levine’s study?

Answer 12

-Data was collected by either interested, responsible students who were either travelling to foreign countries or returning to their home countries for the summer, or by cross-cultural psychologists and their students to in other countries who volunteered to assist the authors
-All experimenters were college age and dressed neatly and casually. To control for experimenter gender effects and to avoid potential problems in some cities, all experiments were men

Question 13

What was done to ensure standardisation in scoring and to minimise experimenter effects in Levine’s study?

Answer 13

-All experimenters received both a detailed instruction sheet and on-site field training for acting their roles, learning the procedure for participant selection and scoring of participants
-The experimenters practised together
-No verbal communication was required of the experimenter

Question 14

What was the procedure for the dropped pen experiment?

Answer 14

Walking at a carefully practised, moderate pace (15 paces/10 seconds), experimenters walked toward a solitary pedestrian passing in the opposite direction. When 10 to 15 feet from the participant, the experimenter reached into his pocket and accidentally, without appearing to notice, dropped his pen behind in view to the participant and continued walking. A total of 214 men and 210 women were approached. They were helpful if they called back the experimenter and/or picked up the pen

Question 15

What was the procedure for the hurt leg experiment?

Answer 15

Walking with a heaving limp and wearing a large and clearly visible leg brace, experimenters accidentally dropped and unsuccessfully struggled to read down for a pile of magazines as they came within 20 feet of a passing pedestrians. A total of 253 men and 240 women were approached. Helping was defined as offering to help or beginning to help without offering.

Question 16

What was the procedure for the helping a blind person across the street experiment?

Answer 16

Experimenters, dressed in dark glasses and carrying white canes, acted the role of a blind person needing help getting across the street. Experimenters attempted to locate downtown corners with crosswalks, traffic signals, and moderate, steady pedestrian flow. They stepped up to the corner just before the light turned green, helped out their cane, and waited until someone offered help. A trial was terminated after 60 seconds 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. Helping was scored if participants, at a minimum, informed the experimenter that the light was green.

Question 17

What were some of the key findings of Levine’s study?

Answer 17

-No significant gender differences in helping behaviour were found
-Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was overall the most helpful with a 93.99% helping rate
-Kuala Lampur, Malaysia was the least helpful with a helping rate of 40.33%
-Helping was fairly consistent across all three measures
-There was a small relationship between walking speed and overall helping, with participants in faster cities less likely to help
-No relationship between population size or collectivism and helping behaviour
-The mean rate of helping for simpatia countries was 82.87%, compared to 65.87% in non-simpatia countries

Question 18

What does simpatia mean?

Answer 18

It is a cultural value particularly associated with Spanish and Latin American societies. It is defined by a concern for the well being of others, with an obligation to be friendly, polite, and helpful

Question 19

What possible conclusions can be made from Levine’s study?

Answer 19

-Helping behaviour in non emergency situations is not universal but varies between cities
-There are large variations in the likelihood of receiving help in non emergency situations in different cultural contexts. There was however no relationship between helping and collectivism/individualism, although there was a significant difference between helping in simpatia and non simpatia cultures
-The only characteristic of cities measured in this study that correlates with helping is economic prosperity: poorer cities tended to have higher rates of helping. Helping was not related to city size or pace.

Question 20

How were the community variables measured?

Answer 20

-Population size: taken from the United Nations Demographic Yearbook
-Economic prosperity: taken from the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) statistics published by the World Bank
-Cultural values: Cross cultural psychologists rated countries on a scale of 1 to 10 from very collectivist to very individualist. Spanish and Latin American countries were all coded as simpatia
-Pace of life: measured by average observed walking speed between 2 points.

Question 21

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research methods used in Levine’s study?

Answer 21

-Good ecological validity due to natural environment and realistic situation
-Difficult to control extraneous variables (eg. personal circumstances)
-However, extraneous variables were minimised as the experimenters were highly trained so that as far as possible all participants had similar experiences

Question 22

What are the strengths and weaknesses of types of data collected in Levine’s study?

Answer 22

-Quantitative so data can be easily compared between each city
-How no context to this data (eg. if someone looked like they nearly helped and their internal battle)

Question 23

What ethical considerations are there in Levine’s study?

Answer 23

-People did not consent to take part in the study or for their data to be used
-Deception used by experimenters
-Could not withdraw as they did not know they were in the study
-Not debriefed
-Unlikely to have been distressed by the experiment

Question 24

Can Levine’s study be considered valid?

Answer 24

-Good face validity
-Good ecological validity
-If they saw it numerous times, they could figure out what was going on and respond to demand characteristics
-Tourism could be an extraneous variable

Question 25

Can Levine’s study be considered reliable?

Answer 25

-Not all participants had the same experience (eg. time of day and purpose of their journey)
-Natural setting so poor internal reliability
-However, experimenters were highly trained to make sure they gave all participants as consistent an experience as possible

Question 26

Was there any sampling bias in Levine’s study?

Answer 26

-Large sample of 1200
-Random sampling so more likely to be representative than opportunity in Piliavin’s study
-Reasonable controls in place to match the samples in the different cities being compared
-District and time of day were matched

Question 27

Can Levine’s study be considered ethnocentric?

Answer 27

No because it was done in a number of different countries with the purpose of comparing them

Question 28

What are the practical applications of Levine’s study?

Answer 28

It is helpful for travellers to know where they are likely to receive help or not and be more careful in places they are less likely to receive help.