SOCIAL AREA: Piliavin et al.

Question 1

Piliavin et al.: Aims

Answer 1

• aimed to investigate what factors affected helping behaviour, including things such as race

Question 2

Piliavin et al.: Sample

Answer 2

• opportunity sample
• 4450 people’s data analysed
• people travelling on the Harlem-Bronx train from 11AM to 3 PM on weekdays from April 15th to June 26th 1968
• 55% white and 45% black

Question 3

Piliavin et al.: Procedure

Answer 3

• two female observers, a male model and victim boarded the train
• victim conditions either drunk or with a cane, and black or white
• model conditions either helping after 70s in critical area, 150s in critical area, and either displaying help in adjacent area after 4th or 6th station
• after one of these amounts of time occurred, the victim staggered and collapsed and remained motionless until they received help
• model only intervened if no ps helped within given time
• if model did assist they would depart the train to board another going in the opposite direction

Question 4

Piliavin et al.: Quantitative results

Answer 4

• observers recorded what help was received, how quickly and how many helped
• 62/62 ‘cane’ trials had help
• 19/38 ‘drunk’ trials had help
• 90% of helpers were male, despite all victims being male
• 64% of helpers were white

Question 5

Piliavin et al.: Qualitative results

Answer 5

• ‘It’s for men to help him’
• ‘I’m not strong enough’
• ‘You feel so bad that you don’t know what to do’

Question 6

Piliavin et al.: Conclusions

Answer 6

• concluded that state of victim affected how likely people were to help him; many more people helped on cane trials than on drunk trials

Question 7

Piliavin et al: Ethics

Answer 7

Deception: scenario was faked without telling participants

Not debriefed

Informed consent not given; didn’t know they were in a study

Withdrawal; not told they could withdraw, on a moving train, could only go to next carriage, may not be able to get through crowd, still not able to fully remove self from situation

Competence: researchers were students and ‘didn’t like’ doing the drunk experiment, hence why there were fewer trials

Confidentiality upheld, no names or photos released

Question 8

Piliavin et al.: Internal Reliability

Answer 8

• set controls and layout of adjacent and critical area etc.

- however should have had same no. drunk and cane trials

Question 9

Piliavin et al.: External Reliability

Answer 9

• over 100 trials; high
• 4450 ps, 80% of time got help; consistent result, same with cane trials; 62/65 received help
• sample large enough to confirm consistent effect (4450)

Question 10

Piliavin et al.: Internal Validity

Answer 10

• weren’t aware of situation so reactions were genuine; not affected by bias or any sort
• likely they might have already seen trial during other journeys; demand characteristics

Question 11

Piliavin et al.: External Validity

Answer 11

• low; large sample with different races and mix of genders but only in New York; know from Levine et al.’s research that NYC is not a helpful city so cannot be an overly accurate representation of helping behaviours across humans as a race, only in NYC

Question 12

Piliavin et al.: Ecological Validity

Answer 12

• high as it was conducted on a public subway
• situation very feasible
• however, may well have seen study happen on another journey

Question 13

Piliavin et al.: Ethnocentrism

Answer 13

• only conducted in NYC
• however NYC is a heterogenous city and 45% of ps were black
• different racial backgrounds but still same culture

Question 14

Piliavin et al.: Areas and Perspectives

Answer 14

Social area: invesigating impact of other people on our behaviour and if likelihood of helping is affected by known witnesses to event (diffusion of responsibility)

Biological area: observation of an emergency will create an emotional arousal state which the observer would find unpleasant; may determine our actions

Cognitive area: emphasis on cost-reward calculation as determining how witnesses to emergencies act to remove their arousal; actions clearly influenced by mental calculation that implies a cognitive component to their model

Question 15

Piliavin et al.: Key Theme

Answer 15

Likelihood of being helped in an emergency does not have to be reduced by there being many witnesses present, although this may be affected by bystanders being able to see how other witnesses are behaviour
Also suggests people are more likely to be helped if they seem to need help due to factors beyond their control (cane as opposed to being drunk)
First helpers likely to be male

Question 16

Piliavin et al.: Free will / Determinism

Answer 16

Free will: people prefer to aid someone with a cane over a drunk person; choice; also 19/38 drunk trials received help and 62/65 cane trials; shows that people have free will over whether or not they help as neither of these statistics are 100% either way

Determinism: suggests that determining factors might be a combination of physiological and cognitive factors (arousal followed by a cost-reward analysis) while it is possible the situational factors (confined nature of setting) could have played a part; however, as they did not manipulate the setting of the experiment as an independent variable, this can only be speculation

Question 17

Piliavin et al.: Reductionism / Holism

Answer 17

Reductionist: misses out other reasons why people might help such as kindness and a genuine altruistic desire to help another person simply because they are in need

Holism: taking into account a range of factors (physiological (arousal), cognitive (cost-reward analysis), situation (confined nature of setting), rather than just taking into account of these factors alone

Question 18

Piliavin et al.: Psychology as a science

Answer 18

Inductive research; had developed a theory from data collected
Opposite of deductive research