Pillavin Flashcards
What is pluralstic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility?
PI: tendency for people in a group to mislead each other about an emergency situation. (Eg others remaining calm so also don’t act)
dR: less likely to help if others are present as responsibility is shared
What was the aim for Piliavin?
Investigate factors affecting helping behaviour.
What factors was Piliavin interested in?
(TSFRR)
Type of victim (drunk or ill) Speed of helping Frequency of helping Race of helper Race of victim
What method was used in Piliavin?
Field experiment with participant observation
Who were the participants in Piliavins study?
4450 men and women on New York underground between 11am-3pm on weekdays
59th-125th street as no stops for 7.5 mins
(45% black and 55% white)
Average number of people where victim is was 9
What was the procedure of Piliavin?
2m 2f students per group. 4 teams collected data for 103 trials. Females sat outside and recorded data while male model and victim stood.
Train passed first station (70 secs) victim staggered and collapsed. He remained motionless until received help, if no help received as train slows model helped.
6-8 trials were run on any given day and all trials were given same victim condition. The 4 victims (1 from each team) were males 3 white 1 black all dressed identically.
38 trials victim smelled of alcohol and carried alcohol in a brown bag, 65 had black cane.
There were 4 different model conditions.
Observations recorded on; Total number who helped, race, sex, location Race, sex, location of every passenger How long it took for help to arrive Comments recorded.
What were the 4 model conditions used in Piliavin?
Critical early- model in critical area and helped after 70 seconds
Critical late- model in CA and helped after 150 seconds
Adjacent early-stand adjacent area waited 70 secs
Adjacent late- stand adjacent waited 150 seconds
What were the results of Piliavin?
Cane victim; helped 62/65 trials
Drunk: 19/38 trials
60% where spontaneous help was given after one person helped the different conditions (black white drunk cane) had no difference on number of extra helpers. Race of victim made no significant difference but same race helping on drunk.
90% helpers male
64% of helpers white
34 people left critical area especially when drunk condition
More comments on drunk trials when nobody helped after 70 seconds.
‘Its for men to help him’
‘I’m not strong enough to help’
‘You feel so bad you don’t know what to do’
Explanation and conclusion of Piliavin is?
Observation of an emergency situation creates emotional arousal in bystanders. We are motivated to help by unpleasant feelings of arousal.
Cost reward;
Cost of helping such as effort embarrassment and physical harm
Cost of not helping, self blame and judge from others
Rewards of helping such as praise from self and others
Rewards of not helping, such as getting on with business
Drunk are helped less as cost is greater.
Diffusion of responsibility isn’t found in cane carrying as cost of not helping is high and cost of helping is low.
What increases and decreases emotional arousal state?
Increase: empathy with victim, close to emergency, length of time
Decrease: helping, help from another source, leaving, deciding if they deserve help
What was the background of Piliavin?
The murder case of Kitty Genovese in New York where 40 people witnessed he attack for over 30 mins and did nothing to help.
To test bystander apathy; diffusion of responsibility and pluralstic ignorance
Wanted to see this in a field experiment in the real world for higher ecological validity
