Pilliavin Flashcards
What were the aims of Piliavin et al?
To investigate helping behaviour on the new york subway.
To test one theory of the bystander effect against another effect.
To test latine and darleys theory of pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility.
To investigate under real life conditions the effect on the speed and frequency of helping and the race of the helper.
What were the IVs?
The type of victim, race of victim, presence of helping models, size of witnessing group.
What were the DVs?
The frequency of help, speed of help, race of helper, sex of helper, movement out of area, verbal comments.
What was the sample?
4,450 witnesses.
What was the type of sampling used?
Opportunity sampling.
What kind of study was used?
Field study.
What were the controls?
The performance of the actor, the teams.
What was the size of each of the teams and what did they contain?
4 teams, 2 women, 2 males.
What did the men in the teams do?
1 acted as the victim, 1 acted as the model.
What did the women in the teams do?
They recorded the reactions.
Who was used in the teams?
16 general subjects from the uni of Columbia.
What was observed?
Race, sex, location of passengers in critical area, total number of passengers in the whole carriage, total number of helpers who assisted the victim, how long it took the helper to arrive.
Who were the victims?
3 white, 1 black aged between 26-35.
How long did the victim lie on the floor for?
Until the model helped after either 70 seconds or 150 seconds.
Where did this take place?
On the New York subway between 59th and 129th street on the 8th avenue line.
Why was the selected route chosen?
As it was a non stop journey of 7 1/2 minutes.
How many trials were conducted?
104 (6-8 per day) over a period of 2 months.
What were the 2 conditions?
Blind and drunk.
How many trials were carried out in each condition?
38 drunk and 65 blind.
What kind of data was produced?
Quantitative.
How many people were helped? (Blind)
62/65 without a model. Average time of 5 seconds.
How many people were helped? (Drunk)
19/38. models rarely needed.
What was the reaction of some people when help took a long time?
34 people left the area when help took a long time.
How was qualitative data produced?
Through comments from women centring around why they weren’t helping.
What were the conclusions?
Diffusion of responsibility hypothesis not supported.
Results differ from the research by Latane and Darley.
What are some issues with this method?
Participants were not debriefed. Participants did not have informed consent. People may have overlapped. Confounding variables. Ethics violated. Difficult to replicate results.
What are some advantages of this method?
High ecological validity.
Low demand characteristics.
A lot of detailed data produced.
What are some possible improvements?
Use multiple ethnicities. Use a neutral condition. Try with women. Redo it all over NY. Improve concurrent validity by investigating a range of helping situations. Vary the trainline. Do it all in one day (blitz) Vary the seasons. Widen the time period.
