Social area: Levine Flashcards
Define collectivist
Priority given to welfare of one or more collective entities and therefore looking out for and helping anyone/everyone in the community
Define individualist
Focus on the individual and nuclear family
What is Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)?
An economic well being measure of how much the average income earned in that country was capable of purchasing
What is simpatia?
A hispanic/spanish cultural tradition which focusses on being nice, friendly, agreeable and good natured rather than focussing on achievement and productivity
What was Levine’s first aim?
To see if the tendency of people within a city to offer non emergency help to strangers was stable across different situations in which people needed help
What was Levine’s second aim?
To see if helping of strangers would vary across cultures
What was Levine’s third aim?
To identify the characteristics of those communities in which strangers are more/less likely to be helped
What was Levine’s research method?
A quasi experiment and correlation
Give evidence for Levine’s study being a quasi experiment and a correlation
Used to establish whether any relationship found between level of helping and characteristics of countries and the IV and DV were not manipulated
How large was each city in terms of population?
230,000
How fast were the confederates walking in the dropped pen condition?
15 paces/10 seconds
Who did confederates walk towards in the dropped pen condition?
A lone pedestrian passing in the opposite direction
How far away was the pedestrian when the confederate dropped their pen?
10-15 feet
How was helping behaviour measured in the dropped pen condition?
If P called back to C saying they dropped their pen or brought the pen back to C
What was the sample of the dropped pen condition?
214 men/210 women
What was the condition of C in the hurt leg condition?
C walked with a heavy limp and wore a large leg brace
What did experimenters do in the hurt leg condition?
They accidentally dropped and unsuccessfully struggled to reach down for a pile of magazines
When did the experimenters drop the pile of magazines?
When they were within 20 feet of the pedestrian
How was helping defined in the hurt leg condition?
By offering to help and/or beginning to help
What was the sample of the hurt leg condition?
253 men/240 women
What were the two discarded tasks?
Asking for change and whether or not someone would post a mislaid letter
Why was the asking for change task discarded?
Because in Calcutta there was a general shortage of small value coins and notes
Why was the task involving posting a mislaid letter discarded?
Because residents of Tel Aviv were afraid to touch the letters for fear that they might contain explosives, also less developed countries had a lack of post boxes
Describe the criteria of when participants conducted the experiment
Monday-Friday, 9-5 in the city centre from 1992-1997
Who did the experimenters not approach?
Children, elderly or anyone carrying many/heavy objects
List the top 3 helpful cities (with overall helping percentages)
1) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (93.3%)
2) San Jose, Costa Rica (91.3%)
3) Lilongwe, Malawi (86%)
List the 3 least helpful cities (with overall helping percentages)
21) Singapore, Singapore (48%)
22) New York, USA (44.67%)
23) Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (40.33%)
To what extent were offers of help stable across the three situations of helping behaviour?
Quite stable there was little variation between 3 conditions
What were the 4 community variables that were looked at?
Population size, PPP, Collectivist-Individualist, Pace of life
How was data gathered on population size?
Population size from each metropolitan area was taken from the most current edition of the United Nations Demographic Yearbook
To what extent was there a relationship between PPP?
There was a significant negative relationship between PPP and helping behaviour
How was the collectivist-individualist variable measured?
6 internationally expert cross-cultural psychologists were asked to rate the 23 countries on a scale of 1-10 (1 = collectivist and 10 = individualist)
How was pace of life measured?
70 people’s (35M and 35F) walking pace was measured in the same downtown location as the helping measures
To what extent was there a relationship between pace of life and helping behaviour?
Small relationship, overall helping behaviour in countries with a faster pace of life were less likely to help
Was there a difference between male and female helping behaviour?
No difference
How helpful were the 4 Latin American countries (and Spain)?
They were above the mean in overall helping behaviour when compared to other studies
What is the percentage of overall helping between simpatia and non simpatia countries?
Simpatia - 82.87%
Non-simpatia - 65.87%
What was the conclusion in terms of helping behaviour and PPP?
Overall levels of helping across cultures are inversely related to a countries economic productivity
What was the conclusion in terms of simpatia countries?
Countries with the cultural tradition of simpatia are far more helpful on average than countries with no such tradition
Which ethical guidelines did Levine uphold?
Confidentiality
In what way might it be argued that Levine also had ethical considerations?
There were restrictions placed on who was approached
Which ethical guidelines did Levine break?
No consent, Deception, No withdrawal, No debrief, Minor harm caused if P’s felt guilty for not helping
Was the procedure standardised and replicable? (internal reliability)
Yes - confederates were given clear and detailed instructions and training
How did having three different helping behaviours improve reliability?
Helped to show what extent helping behaviour was consistent across 3 scenarios
Was enough data collected to suggest a consistent effect? (external reliability)
Yes (424 dropped pen, 493 hurt leg, 281 blind)
Was it an accurate test of helping behaviour? Are there any other possible reasons for the behaviour seen? (Internal validity)
May have been measuring cultural values, also there is a possibility for demand characteristics if P’s saw what they were doing as they repeated many times
Why is the research not ethnocentric?
Impressive number of countries looked into
Despite being a cross-cultural study, why can we argue that the research could still be considered ethnocentric?
Only one place in Africa and one in the Middle Eat, many areas were missed out as it predominantly researched America’s, Europe and Asia
