Social Area - Piliavin Flashcards
What were the 4 variables of the study?
- type of victim
- race of victim
- number of witnesses
- someone setting an example of helping behaviour
What was the aim of the study?
To see the impact of helping behaviour depending on a number of different variable
What was the instructions given to the victim?
at 70 seconds go to the critical area and pretend to collapse. Stay there until someone helps
What were the participants in this study?
Passenger on train
Mean number of 43 people per carriage
45% black 55% white
What were the results for the drunk and cane condition?
50% of the time the drunk victim was helped
95% of the time the cane person was helped
What were the results of the critically early and late conditions?
2ppts helped in the critically late condition
4ppts helped in the critically early condition
What were the results of the adjacent early and late conditions?
2ppts helped in the adjacent late condition
5ppts helped in the adjacent early condition
what were the results of the race condition?
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.
what was the results for the number of witnesses on the train?
Victims were helped faster when there were 7 or more male witnesses in carriage than one to three.
What were some quotes given by passengers?
Women said “its for men to help” and so 95% of helpers were men. Others said they “don’t know where to look”
How long did it take for passengers to help victims?
A median time of 5 seconds.
What can we conclude about the drunk and cane condition?
An individual who appears to be ill is more likely to be helped than those who are drunk
What can we conclude about the gender of helpers?
Men are more likely to help than women
What can we conclude about help towards drunk victims?
There is a tendency of same-race helpers
What can we conclude about the number of witnesses affecting helping behaviour?
Help comes quicker with a greater amount of witnesses present
Factors that increase arousal:
- if the victim can empathise with the victim
- if the observer is close to the victim
- if the victim is left for a long time without help
Factors that decrease arousal:
- helping directly
- leaving the victim
- going to get help
- deeming the victim as undeserving of help
How is this study biological?
Emergency situations can cause a change in arousal that we cannot control and this determines how we act
How is this study cognitive?
It says that other people impact the way we think
How is this study social?
The presence of others influences our actions
Is this study ethnocentric?
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.
Is this study scientific?
Uses quantitative data
Uses inductive reasoning by repeatedly looking at how people behave
Controls
Uses experiments
What type of method was used?
Field experiment
What are the strengths of the method used?
Real life setting means there are no demand characteristics. Also used a standardised procedure so therefore replicable
what type of data was collected?
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
What were the strengths of the ethics?
Names and personal data was not recorded
What were the weaknesses of the ethics?
Perception was involved and passengers did not give consent. They also were not debriefed
How was this study valid
High ecological validity. also valid because trials ran on same train line, same time of day in the same critical area
How was this study invalid?
Results could have been affected by extraneous variables
How was this study reliable?
There were a large number of trails and so established consistent effect
