Piliavin et al (1969)

Question 1

What area of study is this from?

Answer 1

The social area

Question 2

What was it a study of?

Answer 2

Good samaritanism and the bystander effect

Question 3

What was the historical background of this study?

Answer 3

Kitty Genovese:
-A 28 year old woman in NY 1964
-Harassed 2x before murdered
-Whole attack lasted 35 mins
-38 witnesses but none helped in any way

Question 4

What were the four aims of this study?

Answer 4

1. Would an ill person get more help than a drunk person? (type of victim)
2. Would people show ethnocentric behaviour? (others of same race as victim)
3. Would the intervention of a model influence others?
   4.Would the size of the group of bystanders influence how much/speed of help?

Question 5

What is bystander apathy?

Answer 5

When people fail to act and help someone in need when others are present

Question 6

What is diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 6

Bystanders don’t take responsibility to help victims when there are other bystanders present, as each feels as if someone else can help. Like a pie chart: more people=more sections=smaller sections=smaller responsibility

Question 7

What is altruism?

Answer 7

Doing something for someone without getting anything for yourself, not doing it for a reward

Question 8

What was the design of this study?

Answer 8

-Social experiment
-Field experiment for a real life situation

Question 9

What were the independent variables?

Answer 9

-Ill or drunk
-Black or white
-Model or no model (+ adjacent/critical, fast/slow)
-Passenger numbers

Question 10

What was the control variable?

Answer 10

The clothes of the victim

Question 11

What were the dependent variables?

Answer 11

-Gender of helpers
-Race of helpers + compared to the race of model
-What the participants were saying
-Time it took for participants to help
-Latency
-Number of participants that helped
-Area/location the helping participants came from

Question 12

Who were the participants?

Answer 12

The public of the new york subway (didn’t consent so not necessarily participants)

Question 13

What was the sampling method used?

Answer 13

Convenience sampling as it was whoever was in the subway carriage at the time

Question 14

How many trials were there where people didn’t help?

Answer 14

6

Question 15

What % of the time did the ill victim receive help?

Answer 15

95%

Question 16

What % of the time did the drunk person receive help?

Answer 16

50%

Question 17

How many people altogether left the critical area when the victim collapsed?

Answer 17

34

Question 18

What was the critical area?

Answer 18

The area of the subway carriage that the victim collapsed in

Question 19

What was the adjacent area?

Answer 19

The area adjacent to the area of the subway carriage that the victim collapsed in

Question 20

How many seconds on average did it take for participants to help the ill victim? (without aid of model)

Answer 20

5 seconds

Question 21

How many seconds on average did it take for participants to help the drunk victim? (without aid of model)

Answer 21

109 seconds

Question 22

What is arousal?

Answer 22

A feeling of discomfort, guilt, an unpleasant emotional state

Question 23

What were some strengths of the study?

Answer 23

-Large sample size establishes reliable findings
-Generalisable because of race percentages
-Fairly reliable because of the 103 trials done the same time every day
-Well controlled for a field experiment
-Fairly true to life

Question 24

What were some weaknesses of the study?

Answer 24

-Participants weren’t debriefed
-Participants didn’t consent to being studied
-Participants couldn’t withdraw, trapped for 7+1/2 mins
-One student didn’t like playing the drunk victim in one of the teams, so there were more
responses studied to an ill victim than a drunk one
-Not the most generalisable as most groups such as children/younger people and people working at that time
-Not the most true to life: the way the ill person fell into the middle of the carriage + someone being drunk at 11am would seem suspicious and possibly cause people to act differently