Pilivan's study

Question 1

Who was Kitty Genovese?

Answer 1

A 28 year old woman who was murdered in New York in 1964 as she was walking home.

Question 2

What was concerning about Kitty genovese’s murder?

Answer 2

The attack lasted approximately 35 minutes and there were roughly 38 witnesses, however, none of them went to help and none of them called the police.

Question 3

Why do you think nobody helped Kitty Genovese?

Answer 3

Personal safety - they might have been afraid for their own lives
They thought someone else would call or help.

Question 4

What is altruism?

Answer 4

doing something for someone else without getting anything for yourself

Question 5

What are extrinsic rewards?

Answer 5

External, physical rewards (e.g getting money)

Question 6

What are Intrinsic rewards?

Answer 6

Internal, emotional rewards (e.g feeling good about yourself)

Question 7

What bystander apathy?

Answer 7

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

Question 8

What is diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 8

Bystanders do not take responsibility to help victim when there are other bystanders present as each feels as if someone else can help.

Question 9

What were the four research questions in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What research method is Piliavin’s study? How do you know?

Answer 10

It is a field experiment because there is are independent and dependent variables and it takes place in a natural environment.

Question 11

What were the independent variables in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 11

Victim: white vs black, drunk vs ill
Model: critical area vs adjacent area, early (helped after 70 seconds) vs Late (helped after 150 seconds)

Question 12

What were the dependent variables in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 12

Recorded comments made spontaneously by nearby passengers
Observer 1: Race, sex, location of people in critical area, total number of people in carriage and total number of people who helped the victim
Observer 2: Race, sex and locations of people in adjacent area and the length of time (latency) it took for the first helpers’ arrival.

Question 13

When and where did Piliavin’s study take place?

Answer 13

New York 8th avenue independent subway between 11am and 3pm on weekdays between 15th April 1968 and 26th June 1968

Question 14

How many trials were in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 14

103

Question 15

What happened in Piliavin’s study?

Answer 15

Approximately 70 seconds into the train journey, the victim would stagger forward and collapse, until he received help, he would remain on the floor. In some trials, a model would come in after 70 or 150 seconds to help the victim.

Question 16

Describe the model in Piliavin’s study

Answer 16

he was always a white male between 24-29. He was not always dressed the same

Question 17

Describe the victim in Piliavin’s study

Answer 17

He was always male and always wore the same clothes

Question 18

How many participants were in Piliavin’s study? and what percentage of them were white and black?

Answer 18

4,450, 55% white, 45% black

Question 19

What features of Piliavin’s procedure were kept the same? (controls)

Answer 19

The timings
the actors
the order of the experiment

Question 20

What features of the procedure may not have been the same in all of Piliavin’s trials?

Answer 20

The script
The number of passengers in the carriage
the number of ill trials vs drunk trials

Question 21

How many of Piliavin’s trials had the victim acting drunk vs ill? what was the reason for this difference?

Answer 21

65 ill and 38 drunk

Because one of the teams didn’t like doing the drunk trials so did ill ones instead.

Question 22

Describe the quantitative results of Piliavin’s study

Answer 22

help was given to the ill person on 95% of the trials (62/65), but only on 50% of the trials for the drunk person.
across 21 of the trials, 39 people actually left the critical area when the victim collapsed
ON average, it took people 5 seconds to help the ill victim and 109 seconds to help the drunk victim

Question 23

What were the qualitative results of Piliavin’s study?

Answer 23

Comments from passengers
e.g women said “its for men to help”
“you feel bad when you don’t know what to do”

Question 24

What reasons did Piliavin give for why there was no diffusion of responsibility?

Answer 24

Passengers were trapped in a confined space so there was no one else coming to help
there were reduced costs to helping i.e you are sat on the train anyway
Unlike the situation with Kitty Genovese, it was clear that there was a problem

Question 25

What model did Piliavin come up with to explain the results of the study?

Answer 25

The arousal cost-reward model

Question 26

Explain the arousal cost-reward model

Answer 26

The bystander experiences arousal, then they weigh up the costs of helping or not helping to decide whether or not to help.

Question 27

What are the costs of helping/not helping according to Piliavin?

Answer 27

helping: effort, harm, embarrassment

Not helping: disapproval, blame, guilt, judgement

Question 28

What are the rewards/benefits to helping/not helping according to Piliavin?

Answer 28

helping: praise from others, feeling good about yourself

not helping: being able to continue your other activities, less effort

Question 29

On what grounds could Piliavin’s study be considered ethnocentric?

Answer 29

It was only done in new York so only consisted on New Yorkers, and although there were lots of participants, we do not know where they were from

Question 30

Why might Piliavin’s study be not ethnocentric?

Answer 30

New York is very culturally and nationally diverse, so many people were probably from foreign countries, meaning it isn’t ethnocentric

Question 31

What ethical guidelines did Piliavin uphold? How?

Answer 31

Confidentiality - because they didn’t know anyone’ names or personal details, the entire study was totally confidential.
Competence - they all did know what they were doing and Piliavin was a social scientist.

Question 32

Did Piliavin’s study have internal reliability?

Answer 32

No, the script changed, they acted differently in each trial and there was an uneven number of ill to drunk trials.

Question 33

Did Piliavin’s study have external reliability? (trials)

Answer 33

There were consistent effects for the ill trials, so yes (95% of trials showed help given), but on the drunk trials there wasn’t so overall no.

Question 34

Did Piliavin’s study have external reliability? (participants/sample)

Answer 34

Yes because there were 4450 participants officially which showed a consistent effect, however, it could be argued that there were in fact fewer participants as not everyone in the carriage could have helped one person.

Question 35

Did Piliavin’s study have internal (construct) validity?

Answer 35

Not really as there were no interviews conducted so we have no way of knowing if the study was actually measuring responses to people in need.

Question 36

Did Piliavin’s study have external (population) validity?

Answer 36

yes because New York is a very culturally diverse city with lots of tourists so would represent a number of people, but still it was only conducted in New York so we don’t really know.

Question 37

Did Piliavin’s study have external (ecological) validity?

Answer 37

Yes because it was a real life situation as it took place in a natural setting and the participants weren’t aware that they were taking part in a study.

Question 38

How did Piliavin’s study break informed consent guidelines?

Answer 38

The participants weren’t aware that they were part of a study and they weren’t debriefed so they couldn’t give informed consent.

Question 39

how did Piliavin’s study break withdrawal guidelines?

Answer 39

As the participants didn’t know that they were in a study, they weren’t able to withdraw.

Question 40

How did Piliavin’s study break competence guidelines?

Answer 40

They admitted that it wasn’t the same each time and one group of students didn’t like playing the drunk victim so just ran ill trials, throwing off the results.