Piliavin: Responses to People in Need (Social)

Question 1

When was Piliavin’s study published?

Answer 1

1969

Question 2

What theories was Piliavin’s study based on?

Answer 2

-The reason an individual may not help is because they diffuse responsibility
-Bystander apathy which suggests another explanation for not helping is that a bystander may believe that someone else will do what is necessary so there is no need for them to offer assistance

Question 3

What is diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 3

Where the responsibility for the situation is spread among the people present. This implies that the more people present, the more the bystander believes the responsibility is spread out so they feel less personally responsible and are less likely to help.

Question 4

What is the background to Piliavin’s study?

Answer 4

-Kitty Genovese was murdered in 1964 when she was stabbed to death over a period of 30 minutes in front of a reported 38 unresponsive witnesses. This led to many social psychologists to study the concept of the Good Samaritan
-Much of the work on victimisation had been conducted in lab settings using non-visual emergency situations
-Piliavin wanted to investigate the effect of a number of variables on helping behaviour under real life conditions

Question 5

What research method was used in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 5

Field experiment

Question 6

What was the field situation in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 6

The trains of the New York Subway between two streets that made a journey of 7 and a half minutes

Question 7

What were the four independent variables in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 7

-Type of victim (drunk or carrying a cane)
-Race of victim (black or white)
-Effect of a model (after 70 or 150 seconds, from the critical or adjacent area, or no model at all)
-Size of the witnessing group (a naturally occurring independent variable)

Question 8

What were the dependent variables?

Answer 8

-Frequency of help
-Speed of help
-Race of help
-Sex of helper
-Movement out of critical area
-Verbal comments by bystanders

Question 9

Who were the observers in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 9

Two females seated in the adjacent area

Question 10

What was the sample for Piliavin’s study and what was the sampling method?

Answer 10

-4,550 men and women on the subway between 11am and 3pm over a period of a few weeks
-About 45% black and 55% white
-Opportunity sampling

Question 11

Who made up the researcher team?

Answer 11

-4 teams of 4 researchers (2 female observers and 2 male. One as a victim and one as the model)
-Victims were all male (3 white, 1 black), all students, aged 26-35, dressed alike. Either smelled of alcohol and carried a bottle or carried a black cane
-Model were all white males aged 24-29 years. 4 conditions were: critical-late, critical-early, adjacent-late, adjacent-early

Question 12

What was the procedure of Piliavin’s study?

Answer 12

-Victim stood in the critical area and after about 70 seconds, he staggered forward and collapsed, looking at the ceiling until receiving help
-If he recieved no help by the time the train stopped, the model would help him up
-At the stop, the team got off and waited separately until passengers left the station then changed platform to repeat in the opposite direction.
-6-8 trials were done on a given day using the same condition

Question 13

What was one problem with the procedure in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 13

There were more cane trials than drunk trials which were distributed unevenly across black and white victims because Team 2 violated instruction by running cane rather than drunk trials because the victim didn’t like playing drunk. Student strikes meant additional trials couldn’t correct this.

Question 14

What were the key findings from Piliavin’s study?

Answer 14

-The cane victim received spontaneous help 95% of the time and the drunk 50%
-Overall help for cane victim 100% and drunk 81%
-Help was offered more quickly to cane victim than drunk (median 5 seconds to 109 seconds)
-90% of the first helpers were male
-There was a slight tendency for same race helping especially in the drunk condition
-No diffusion of responsibility found. People faster to respond in larger groups
-Most comments made by passengers in the drunk condition

Question 15

What are some possible conclusions for Piliavin’s study?

Answer 15

-An individual who appears ill is more likely to receive help than one who appears drunk
-Men are more likely than women to help a male victim
-People are more likely to help those of the same race as themselves, particularly when the situation is the victim’s own making
-When bystanders aren’t able to escape, they are more likely to help
-Bystanders conduct a cost-reward analysis before deciding whether to help or not
-Subsequent spontaneous help from others was unrelated to race or victim type

Question 16

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research method?

Answer 16

-Good ecological validity (natural environment and realistic situation)
-How it is more difficult to control (eg. number of people on the train)
-Some people may have seen the incident many times and it is difficult to guess how they would respond to this

Question 17

What type of data was collected in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 17

-Most quantitative (number of people who helped and time it took to help)
-Qualitative data in the form of comments from passengers

Question 18

What are the strengths and weaknesses of different types of data in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 18

Quantitative data can be easily compared between conditions of the IV and easily represented through descriptive statistics. However, it lacks context (eg. the internal battle of passengers)
Qualitative data gave context to the situation and is useful to understand how people justified not helping

Question 19

What are the ethical considerations of Piliavin’s study?

Answer 19

-Deception because person collapsing was not genuine
-No debrief which could leave them in distress
-Did not consent to have their data used and equally could not withdraw
-People observing would likely feel some anxiety
-Overall, not very ethical

Question 20

Can Piliavin’s study be considered valid?

Answer 20

-Measure of helping is good because, unlike self reports, the study measures actual helping, not estimates
-Good ecological validity because natural environment and realistic situation
-Lacks internal validity because it is not a lab experiment so it is not certain that the IV is what causes the DV to change
-Face validity (appears to measure what it means to)
-Somewhat valid

Question 21

Can Piliavin’s study be considered reliable?

Answer 21

-Low internal validity due to the natural setting
-The experience was not identical for all participants because of personal circumstances
-Participants may have also taken part in the study more than once
-Not very reliable

Question 22

Is there any sampling bias in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 22

No: large sample size, proportion of black and white passengers was representative of local population
Yes: study always took place between 11am and 3pm so those at work or school may be underrepresented. Opportunity sampling is likely to be unrepresentative

Question 23

Can Piliavin’s study be considered ethnocentric?

Answer 23

-It was conducted in just one city, New York, and it was assumed that the findings could be generalised to other cultural contexts
-Cultural factors make a difference to helping behaviour, though it is not known why
-It is ethnocentric

Question 24

What are practical applications of Piliavin’s study?

Answer 24

Understanding when people are likely to receive help can save lives. This study can be used to maximise chances of receiving help:
-Don’t appear drunk
-Males go to other males for help
-Get to a place people can’t leave
-And get help immediately