Paper 2 - Levine et al on Cross Cultural Altruism

Question 1

Explain the background to this study.

Answer 1

Most studies focused on whether population size affects how helpful people are with strangers.
There are other factors that define the character of a city.
Also, cross cultural research is needed to have a richer understanding of the personalities of countries.

Question 2

What are the aims of this study ?

Answer 2

To investigate…
1. Is helping strangers a cross culturally meaningful characteristic.
2. Does helping a stranger vary cross culturally ?
3. What are some community characteristics that are related to helping of strangers across cultures.

Question 3

What is the sample used in this study ?

Answer 3

Major cities in 23 countries.
The countries were selected to provide the widest possible selection of regions and cultures.

Question 4

Who were the experimenters in this study ?

Answer 4

Data was collected by a variety of assistants/experimenters but mainly interested responsible students who were returning to their home for summer.
To control gender effects, all experimenters were male.
They collected data in the main downtown area of the city within the business hours on clear days in the summer months.

Question 5

What were the 4 co-variables that were considered in this study ?

Answer 5

1. Population size taken from the united nations demographic yearbook.
   2.Economic indicator showing economic wellbeing of an average citizen taken from the capita gross domestic product with PPP.
   3.Cultural values, 6 experts rated each county on a 10 point scale where 1 was most collectivist and 10 was most individualist.
2. Pace of life was measured using a walking speed as an indicator. Measurements were taken on a clear day and flat pavement based on 35 men and 35 women.

Question 6

What was the first measure ?

Answer 6

Dropped pen
424 approached
Experimenters walked at a pace of 15paces/10seconds towards a pedestrian passing in the opposite direction. 10 feet away from the pedestrian they dropped the pen.
Helping = called out that they’d dropped a pen or picked up the pen and gave it back

Question 7

What was the second measure ?

Answer 7

Hurt leg
493 approached
The experimenter was walking with a heavy limp and wearing a large clearly visible leg brace. 20 feet away from a pedestrian they dropped a pile of magazines and tries to pick them up.
Helping = offering help and/or beginning to help without offering

Question 8

What was the third measure ?

Answer 8

Blind person
281 approached
Experimenters appeared to be blind with dark glasses and a white cane. They needed help getting across the road. They stepped up to the corner before the light turned green and held out their cane waiting for help.
Helping = the participants informed the experimenter that the light was green.

Question 9

What was the results for the measures of helping ?

Answer 9

The correlation between the dropped pen measure and the blind person was significant (p<0.10).
And between hurt leg and dropped pen (p>0.05)

Question 10

Was there any gender differences in the results of this study ?

Answer 10

NO

Question 11

What were the results for the standard score for each country ?

Answer 11

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 each country. The top two scores were Brazil (1.66) and Costa Rica (1.52). The two lowest were USA (-1.74) and Malaysia (-2.04)

Question 12

What were the results in relation to the 4 co variables that were considered?

Answer 12

1. economic productivity - negative correlation (p<0.15) cities with lower PPP were more helpful.
2. Walking speed - small positive correlation
3. Individualist countries were slightly less helpful
4. population size had no correlation with helpfulness.
5. Simpatia countries (Brazil, costa Rica, Mexico, Spain etc) were more helpful than other cultures (p<0.02)

Question 13

What type of pedestrians did the experimenter approach ?

Answer 13

Over 17
Not disabled
Not old
Not carrying packages

Question 14

What were the conclusions drawn from this study ?

Answer 14

The data provides some support for the view that big cities do have ‘personality’ and some cities may have more ‘helping personality’ than others. To gain full understanding, a multitude of variables needs to be tracked. This challenges a biological view of altruism; cultural variables may be significant.

Question 15

Evaluate the research methods and techniques used in this study

Answer 15

Strengths: Each of the three measures could be fully operationalised and standardised. Each was designed so that it was clear that a person needed help, so it was easy to identify whether help had been given or not. This was important as there was different teams of researchers in different countries.
Weaknesses: The study only looked at one type of helpfulness. All 3 measures involved a superficial kind of helpfulness. These results generalise to the kind of altruism that would enhance survival and be naturally selected. Another weakness us that the ‘pace of life’ was measured by observing how people walked in life. This makes the conclusions about the relationship between pace of life and helpfulness somewhat meaningless.

Question 16

What type of study is this ?

Answer 16

A quasi field experiment - the IV of a helping personality city is naturally occurring and not manipulated.

Question 17

Evaluate the ethics of this study

Answer 17

In field experiments, informed consent is impossible, the study may have also created mild psychological harm. The participants had no debrief and no right to withdraw, also their privacy was invaded as people are observing them without permission.

Question 18

Evaluate the sampling bias in this study

Answer 18

Strengths: A wide range of countries were sampled, enabling conclusions to be drawn about cultural differences. Another strength is that districts of the cities were also well matched.
Weaknesses: The sample of 23 countries was considered by some researchers to be small. One of the issues with a small sample is the possibility of bias because of an insufficient variety of countries and cultures are represented. It may be too many individualist countries are included or too many economically healthy cities are include. It also makes it difficult to detect trends in behaviour. researchers blames the low significance values on the smallness of the sample.

Question 19

Evaluate the reliability in this study

Answer 19

There were 23 different experimenters, however, techniques for measuring helpfulness were carefully standardised. But it’s possible that there were local variations which would reduce the reliability measurement.

Question 20

Evaluate the type of data collected

Answer 20

The data collected was quantitative - in all 3 helping measures, the number of people who helped was recorded. This provides an objective very simple figure when assessing helpfulness in different cultures which is easy to compare and analyse using statistics. However, such numerical values give no insight into why people behave in this way. It would of been possible to interview the participants after, producing detailed qualitative data.

Question 21

Evaluate the validity in this study

Answer 21

The fact that helping behaviour was operationalised as ‘everyday favours’ questions whether were really testing behaviour. The limited sample used reduces the ability to generalise the results to all cultures around the world. In addition, there was a little attempt to control extraneous variables, e.g. at each location a different confederate was used and a individual characteristic might have helped explain the helping rates rather than the action of dropping a pen or being blind.