Piliavin

Question 1

Define altruism.

Answer 1

• Selfless concern for the care of others.
• Doing a good deed without getting any reward.

Question 2

Define bystander apathy.

Answer 2

• Where people fail to act and help someone in need.

Question 3

Define diffusion of responsibility.

Answer 3

• Where these is a victim and lots of bystanders are present, each individual takes less response nobody helps (thinking someone else will).

Question 4

What was the background to Piliavin’s study?

Answer 4

• Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in the Queens district of New York in the middle of the night. It was reported that 38 bystanders either heard or saw what was going on but nobody called the police until it was too late.
• Darley and Lantané set up an experiment is which participants overheard someone apparently having an epileptic seizure where the participant believed they were either the sole person to head the emergency, or one or four other unseen individuals were also present.

Question 5

What were the four aims of Piliavin’s study?

Answer 5

• Would it make a difference is the victim was perceived to be drunk or ill?
• Would it make a difference if the victim was black or white?
• Would it make a different to the behaviour of those witnessing the merge by if someone ‘modelled’ helping behaviour in from of them?
• Would there be a relationship between the levels of helping behaviour and the number of people witnessing the emergency?

Question 6

What was the research method used in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 6

• Field experiment
• Participants were in a natural setting where real life behaviour can be observed and there are independent variables that are manipulated (e.g. types of victim) to test the effect on dependent variables (e.g. number of passengers who helped).

Question 7

What was the sampling method in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 7

• Opportunity sampling.
• The participants were those who were around at the specific time.

Question 8

What was the sample in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 8

• The passengers on the train.
• Over 4450 men and women.
• Mean number per carriage was 43 passengers.
• Racial composition of a typical carriage was about 45% black and 55% white.

Question 9

What were the independent variables in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 9

Victim
- Whether the victim was drunk or ill.
- Whether the victim was black or white.

Model
- Whether the model was in the critical area or the adjacent area
- Whether the model was early (70 seconds) or late (150 seconds).

Question 10

What were the dependent variables in Piliavin’s study?

Question 11

What was the procedure in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 11

• During weekdays from 11am to 3pm from April 15th 1968 to 26th June 1968, four teams of students (each one made up of a male victim, a male model and two female observers) would board the express train of the New York 8th Avenue Independent Subway.
• Approximately 70 seconds into the journey, as the train passed the first station, the victim (who always stood next to a pole in the centre of the end section of the carriage) would stagger forwards and collapse.
• He would remain lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling until he received help.
• If nobody helped the victim within the model condition’s time then the model would intervene.

Question 12

What were the hypotheses in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 12

• A drunk person would get less help than an ill victim.
• People would help others of the same race first.
• Seeing a model person helping would encourage others to help.
• The larger the group, the less likely it would be that the victim would revive help.

Question 13

What equipment was used in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 13

• Victim wore an Eisenhower jacket, old trousers and no tie.
• Drunk trail involved a liquor bottle wrapped in a light brown bag.
• Ill trial involved a black cane.

Question 14

What were the quantitative findings in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 14

• Spontaneous help (I.e. before the model acted) was given on 62 out of 65 cane trials compared to only 19 out of 38 drunk trials.
• 90% of the first helpers were male.
• Help was offered more quickly to the cane victim (a median of 5 seconds) than the drunk victim (a median of 109 seconds).
• Nobody left the carriage but 34 people left the critical area.

Question 15

What were the qualitative findings in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 15

• Often comments were made by women.
• More comments were made by passengers in the drunk condition than the cane condition and the most comments were made when no help was given within the first 70 seconds.
• ‘It’s for men to help him.’
• ‘I wish I could help - I’m not strong enough.’

Question 16

What were the conclusions of Piliavin’s study?

Answer 16

• The state of the victim affects how likely people are to help.
• Males are more likely to help than females.
• Race makes no difference.
• There was no diffusion of responsibility.
  - Passengers couldn’t leave the situation.
  - It was less effort for passengers to help as they were sitting on the train waiting for their stop anyway.
  - Unlike the situation with Kitty Genovese, it was clear what the problem was for the bystanders who were sitting near the victim.

Question 17

Arousal-cost-reward model

Answer 17

It states that when bystanders are faced with a situation:

• A state of arousal is created (it could be fear, disgust, guilt etc…) which makes us feel uncomfortable.
• We want to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling and we can do this in two different ways: either we can help the person or leave the situation.
• What we do depends on the costs and rewards of whether to help or not.

Question 18

What did the results suggest about the type of victim (drunk / ill) in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 18

• The victim with the cane received spontaneous help on 62 out of 65 trials with a median latency of 5 seconds.
• The victim who appeared drunk received spontaneous help on 19 of the 38 trials and the median latency was 109 seconds.

Question 19

What did the results suggest about the race of victim (black / white) in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 19

• With both the black and white the cane victims, the proportion of helped of each race was an expected 55-45 percent split.
• With the drunk victims, it was mainly members of the same race that came to the victims aid.

Question 20

What did the results suggest about the effects of the model in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 20

• On the occasions when the model intervened it was found that while the area the model came from had no effect on passengers’ behaviour, if the model intervened early then he triggered more help than if he intervened late.

Question 21

What did the results suggest about the number of witnesses in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 21

• Victims helped much faster when there were seven or more male passengers in the critical area than when there were between one and three male passengers in the critical area.

Question 22

Over the two trials how many victims received help?

Answer 22

• 81 trials (62 for the ill and 19 for the drunk)

Question 23

Over all the trails how many passengers left the critical area?

Answer 23

34

Question 24

What percentage of spontaneous first helpers were male? (81 helpers)

Answer 24

90%

Question 25

How many trials were there in total?

Answer 25

• 103 trials ( 65 cane trials and 38 drunk trials)

Question 26

What percentage of the 81 trials the victim received help from come from two or more passengers?

Answer 26

60%

Question 27

How does Piliavin’s study lack ecological validity?

Answer 27

• The study took place during the day so participants may not expect to see someone drunk on the train at that time.
• The victim collapsed in a fairly dramatic way (lying on the floor and looking up at the ceiling). check
• It might have seemed more true-to-life if the person who had collapsed was quite a bit older than 26-35 years old.

Question 28

How does Piliavin’s study have ecological validity?

Answer 28

• Fairly realistic situation for someone to collapse on a train and require assistance.

Question 29

How does Piliavin’s study lack population validity?

Answer 29

• The procedure was on,y carried out on weekdays between the times of 11am and 3pm so commuters for 9-5 jobs / students would be included.

Question 30

How does Piliavin’s study have population validity?

Answer 30

• The study was carried in New York which is a very diverse city.
• The sample included people from different ethnic backgrounds and both males and females.

Question 31

How does Piliavin’s study lack construct validity?

Answer 31

• Passengers may have seen the procedure take place more than once which could have affected how they responded to the ‘emergency’.
• If the carriage was particularly busy, the victim may not have been able to collapse in the exact place he was supposed to.
• Past experiences could affect how helpful they are.

Question 32

How does Piliavin’s study have construct validity?

Answer 32

• A large number of controls were imposed in this study e.g. the trails were always run in the same train line at the same times if day with the victim always collapsing at the centre of the end section looking upwards at the same point in the journey. The victims were also dressed the same.
• Passengers didn’t know they were taking part in a psychological experiment. check

Question 33

How does Piliavin’s study lack internal reliability?

Question 34

How does Piliavin’s study have internal reliability?

Answer 34

• The victim always tried to fall on the same place.
• The victim always fell roughly 70 seconds into the journey.
• The trails always ran on weekdays from 11am to 3pm.

Question 35

How does Piliavin’s study lack external reliability?

Answer 35

• There were only 22 trails run with the black victim (8 cane and 14 drunk) which is probably insufficient to establish unarguably consistent findings.
• Due to frequent examples of spontaneous help, there were too few instanced of action by the model to establish any consistent patterns with regards to the impact of his behaviour on genuine passengers.

Question 36

How does Piliavin’s study have external reliability?

Answer 36

• By running 103 trials, they can be fairly confident that the6 have established a consistent effect as this is a large sample size.

Question 37

How was Piliavin’s study ethnocentric?

Answer 37

• Subway users are a similar group each day.
• Only dome in one city (New York) where they all live within the same culture. Therefore it can only tell us about the behaviour of Americans in response to those in need.

Question 38

How was Piliavin’s study not ethnocentric?

Answer 38

• The sample included people from different ethnic backgrounds (45% black and 55% white).
• The study was carried out in New York which has a heterogeneous population.

Question 39

How can Piliavin’s study be defended ethically?

Answer 39

• Despite not being able to withdraw their data, participants could withdraw themselves from the situation (e.g. physically by leaving the carriage or emotionally by providing a reason for not helping).
• There were no names or recognisable details of passengers recorded.

Question 40

How can Piliavin’s study be criticised ethically?

Answer 40

• The participants were deceived as to why someone was collapsing in front of the as the didn’t know that the victim was only pretending to collapse as part of an experiment.
• The passengers did not contest if take part.
• Passengers could not withdraw what they did or said from the data recoded from the researchers.
• In terms of protection from harm, participants who didn’t help the victim could have a reduced sense of their own self worth by knowing that they probably wouldn’t help someone in an emergency.
• There was no debrief (although this would have been feasible via an announcement or by handing out leaflets).