Social Area - Piliavin

Question 1

What were the 4 variables of the study?

Answer 1

1. type of victim
2. race of victim
3. number of witnesses
4. someone setting an example of helping behaviour

Question 2

What was the aim of the study?

Answer 2

To see the impact of helping behaviour depending on a number of different variable

Question 3

What was the instructions given to the victim?

Answer 3

at 70 seconds go to the critical area and pretend to collapse. Stay there until someone helps

Question 4

What were the participants in this study?

Answer 4

Passenger on train
Mean number of 43 people per carriage
45% black 55% white

Question 5

What were the results for the drunk and cane condition?

Answer 5

50% of the time the drunk victim was helped

95% of the time the cane person was helped

Question 6

What were the results of the critically early and late conditions?

Answer 6

2ppts helped in the critically late condition

4ppts helped in the critically early condition

Question 7

What were the results of the adjacent early and late conditions?

Answer 7

2ppts helped in the adjacent late condition

5ppts helped in the adjacent early condition

Question 8

what were the results of the race condition?

Answer 8

If the victim was black and appeared to be drunk, it was only members of his own race that helped rather than when he was ill. The white victim had different races help according to the 45-55 % split.

Question 9

what was the results for the number of witnesses on the train?

Answer 9

Victims were helped faster when there were 7 or more male witnesses in carriage than one to three.

Question 10

What were some quotes given by passengers?

Answer 10

Women said “its for men to help” and so 95% of helpers were men. Others said they “don’t know where to look”

Question 11

How long did it take for passengers to help victims?

Answer 11

A median time of 5 seconds.

Question 12

What can we conclude about the drunk and cane condition?

Answer 12

An individual who appears to be ill is more likely to be helped than those who are drunk

Question 13

What can we conclude about the gender of helpers?

Answer 13

Men are more likely to help than women

Question 14

What can we conclude about help towards drunk victims?

Answer 14

There is a tendency of same-race helpers

Question 15

What can we conclude about the number of witnesses affecting helping behaviour?

Answer 15

Help comes quicker with a greater amount of witnesses present

Question 16

Factors that increase arousal:

Answer 16

1. if the victim can empathise with the victim
2. if the observer is close to the victim
3. if the victim is left for a long time without help

Question 17

Factors that decrease arousal:

Answer 17

1. helping directly
2. leaving the victim
3. going to get help
4. deeming the victim as undeserving of help

Question 18

How is this study biological?

Answer 18

Emergency situations can cause a change in arousal that we cannot control and this determines how we act

Question 19

How is this study cognitive?

Answer 19

It says that other people impact the way we think

Question 20

How is this study social?

Answer 20

The presence of others influences our actions

Question 21

Is this study ethnocentric?

Answer 21

No, because it was carried out in New York where there are lots of different ethnicity and they explicitly stated that there was a 45-55% split. Yes, because they all live in New York having the same culture and so only tells us about the behaviour of American people.

Question 22

Is this study scientific?

Answer 22

Uses quantitative data
Uses inductive reasoning by repeatedly looking at how people behave
Controls
Uses experiments

Question 23

What type of method was used?

Answer 23

Field experiment

Question 24

What are the strengths of the method used?

Answer 24

Real life setting means there are no demand characteristics. Also used a standardised procedure so therefore replicable

Question 25

what type of data was collected?

Answer 25

Quant - allowed data to be compared from one condition to the other
Qual - gave further reasoning behind actions and explained why 95% of helpers were men

Question 26

What were the strengths of the ethics?

Answer 26

Names and personal data was not recorded

Question 27

What were the weaknesses of the ethics?

Answer 27

Perception was involved and passengers did not give consent. They also were not debriefed

Question 28

How was this study valid

Answer 28

High ecological validity. also valid because trials ran on same train line, same time of day in the same critical area

Question 29

How was this study invalid?

Answer 29

Results could have been affected by extraneous variables

Question 30

How was this study reliable?

Answer 30

There were a large number of trails and so established consistent effect