Social Areat Test Levine Flashcards
What was the background for Levine?
Are strangers more likely to receive help in some cities than in other? Levine wanted to see if a number of variables affected how helpful a city is
What were the aims of Levine’s study?
The study had 3 main goals
- 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
- to see if helping strangers varied across cultures
- to identify the characteristics of those communities in which strangers are more likely to be helped
What was the method for Levine?
One local individual from each of the 23 cities which were picked for being large cities which were aimed at obtaining the widest possible sample of the regions and cultures.
There were three helping behaviours measured
Dropped pen: walking at a carefully practiced moderate pace, confederates walked towards a solitary pedestrian when 10-15 feet away the confederate would reach into his picked and accidentally without appearing to notice they dropped a pen and continued walking past. A total of 214 men and 210 women were approached. Help was seen as calling back or picking it up and returning them.
Hurt leg: walking with a heavily limp and a visible leg brace they would seemingly drop and unsuccessfully reach down to grab a pile of magazines as they came within 20 feet of participants. 253 men and 240 women were approached. Helping was offering to help and beginning to help without offering.
Helping a blind person across the street: confederates dressed in dark glasses and carrying white canes would locate city centre intersections which had pedestrian crossings, traffic signals and moderate steady pedestrian flow. Just before the light turned green they would step up to the corner hold out their cane and wait until someone offered help. A total of 281 trials were conducted. Helping was seen as minimum if they informed the confederate the light was green.
Participants were randomly selected randomly, usually by approaching the second potential participant who crossed a predetermined.
What was the significance of Levine’s results?
In relation to the first goal of the study statistical analysis of the results there was a modest degree of consistency across the three measures of helping behaviour.
Countries differed greatly in the amount of help offered to a stranger
In relation to the third goal of the study, a series of correlation analyses were carried out in which each of the different helping measures of the 23 countries was compared with different community variables
- population size of the city
- Purchasing power parity
- where the country could be placed on a scale from 1(most collectivist) to 10(most individualistic.
- pace of life
The only statistically significant relationship was PPP with overall helping and helping of a blind person.
There was a small relationship between faster pace of life and being less likely to help.
Two other variables were analysed but not through correlations
Gender difference in hurt leg and dropped pen condition, however there was no significant difference in levels of helping behaviour between males and females.
The four Latin American countries(Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador) and Spain all had the cultural value of simpatia=being friendly, nice, agreeable and good natured is prioritised over achievement and productivity. As helping strangers is part of their culture it was predicted they would be more helpful than non simpatia countries. They were all above the mean in overall helping and on average more helpful than other countries(mean for simpatia countries simpatia countries=82.87%, mean for no simpatia countries=65.87%)
What were the conclusions of Levine
Overall levels of helping across cultures are inversely related to a country’s economic productivity. Countries with the cultural tradition of simpatia are on average more helpful than countries with no such tradition.
