social psychology : levine Flashcards
aim
To investigate differences in non-emergency helping
behaviour towards strangers in a range of cultures and to
understand differences in terms of cultural traditions and
economic productivity.
method
A total of 1198 participants in 23 countries were given the
opportunity to help in one of three situations involving a dropped
pen, someone with a bad leg struggling to pick up dropped
magazines, or a blind person requiring help to cross the street.
results
There were significant cultural differences in helping,
ranging from 93% in Rio de Janeiro to 40% in Kuala Lumpur.
People in countries with a cultural tradition of simpatia and low
economic productivity were more helpful.
conclusion
There are significant cultural differences in non-
emergency helping behaviour. These are associated with both
economic factors and cultural values.
CONTEXT
Levine et al. note that there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that strangers
are much more likely to receive help in some cities than others. A range of
explanations has been suggested for these variations, including the population
size and rate of population change, economic factors, and cultural values.
However, almost all previous research focused on population size, showing that
the likelihood of receiving help declines with the size of a city’s population.
However, Levine et al. point out that cities vary in many ways apart from size.
They suggest that every city can be seen as having a personality rather like that
of an individual.
There were a number of other limitations in previous research. Most studies
had used unrepresentative opportunity samples, making it hard to draw
conclusions about cultural differences. Also, very few studies had taken place
outside the USA, and most of those compared urban and rural areas in the same
country. The idea behind the Levine et al. study was to compare behaviour in the
largest city of different countries in order to understand the impact of economic
and cultural differences between countries on helping behaviour.
The authors were particularly interested in three classes of factor influencing
the helpfulness of people in a city towards strangers: economic, cultural and
cognitive. The first class is economic factors. It has been suggested that within
the USA there is a weak positive correlation between the economic wealth of a
city and people’s helpfulness. On the other hand it has also been suggested that
financially well-off societies require that individuals behave selfishly in order to
generate wealth. If true, this would suggest that people in prosperous cities may
be less, rather than more helpful.
The second class of factor is cultural. Triandis (1995) has suggested a
distinction between collectivist societies and individualist societies. It may
be that collectivist societies are more concerned with the welfare of others and are
therefore more helpful. On the other hand collectivist societies tend to be mostly
concerned with other members of the same community rather than strangers.
A second cultural factor is simpatia, the cultural value of concern for others.
Simpatia-oriented societies may be particularly helpful towards strangers.
The third class of factor identified by Levine et al. is cognitive. Milgram (1970)
suggested that the rapid pace of modern city life results in sensory overload. To
cope with this, city-dwellers filter out non-essential information so they literally
do not notice when someone needs help. There was little evidence for or against
this idea prior to this study.
key term : Collectivist societies
include many in the
Far East and Africa. The cultural values of
collectivist societies centre on obligations to
a group rather than to the self, so individuals
are obliged to put the needs of family,
company or community ahead of their own.
key term : individualist society
such as Britain, USA
and – to a varying extent – Western European
countries, place more emphasis on the rights
and freedoms of the individual and their
nuclear family.
key term : simpatia
is a cultural value particularly
associated with Spanish and Latin American
societies. It is defined by a concern for the
well-being of others, with an obligation to be
friendly, polite and helpful.
AIM
The aim of the study was to examine the tendency of people in the largest city of
each of 23 countries to help a stranger in a non-emergency situation. Three more
specific aims were investigated:
1 To establish if the tendency of people to help strangers is universal or
dependent on the characteristics of a city.
2 To test whether the helping of strangers varies between cultures.
3 To investigate whether particular characteristics of a community, such as
city size, are associated with the tendency to help strangers.
METHOD - Participants
Participants were from large cities in 23 countries: Austria (Vienna), Brazil
(Rio de Janeiro), Bulgaria (Sofia), China (Shanghai), Costa Rica (San Jose),
Czech Republic (Prague), Denmark (Copenhagen), El Salvador (San Salvador),
Hungary (Budapest), India (Calcutta), Israel (Tel Aviv), Italy (Rome), Malawi
(Lilongwe), Malaysia (Kuala Lampur), Mexico (Mexico City), the Netherlands
(Amsterdam), Romania (Bucharest), Singapore (Singapore), Spain (Madrid),
Sweden (Stockholm), Taiwan (Taipei), Thailand (Bangkok), and the United States
(New York). The selection of countries and cities was influenced by available
opportunities; the experimenters who volunteered were interested cross-cultural
psychologists or travelling students. The total number of participants was 1,198.
Individual participants were selected simply for being the second person to
cross a certain line on a pavement. Children, older people and people with visible
physical disabilities were excluded from selection.
METHOD - Design and procedure
This was a cross-cultural study carried out in the field. Because the conditions
involved comparing naturally occurring groups (the people in each city) the
study should be described as a quasi-experiment rather than a true experiment.
The procedure was carried out in two or more locations in city centres during
office hours on summer days.
To minimise extraneous variables all experimenters were male and they did
not speak to participants. To further standardise conditions experimenters were
trained in exactly how to carry out the procedure. The reliability of experimenter
behaviour was not tested in this study but it had been tested in a previous study
using the same training procedures and found to be good.
Helping behaviour was tested in three non-emergency situations:
*Dropped pen: experimenters dropped a pen and appeared not to notice as
they approached a participant.
*Hurt leg: experimenters walking with a limp and a leg brace dropped a pile
of magazines and appeared to struggle to pick them up.
*Blind person crossing road: experimenters wearing dark glasses and with
white canes stepped up to a crossing and held out their cane, signalling
that they wanted help crossing the road.
In each case the participant was scored as helping if they chose to intervene in
any way. So in the pen condition they were counted as helping if they just told
the experimenter they had dropped it, and in the blind person condition they
were counted as helping even if they just told the experimenter when it was safe
to cross. Participants were not directly asked for help. The rate of helping for each
country was obtained by averaging the rate of helping on the three measures.
Community variables (i.e. the characteristics of the cities and their
inhabitants) were assessed as follows:
*Population size: taken from the United Nations Demographic Yearbook.
*Economic prosperity: taken from the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)
statistics published by the World Bank.
*Cultural values: six independent cross-cultural psychologists rated each
country from 1 (very collectivist) to 10 (very individualistic), and their
average ratings were used. Spanish and Latin American countries were all
coded as simpatia and all others non-simpatia.
*Pace of life: measured by average observed walking speed. Speed was
measured according to the time taken to walk 60 feet (18.3m) between two
markers.
RESULTS - Helpful and unhelpful cities
There were substantial differences between the likelihood of non-emergency
helping in the different cities. The city where help was most likely was Rio de
Janeiro, with a helping rate of 93%. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, came in last with
help only being offered 40% of the time. Rank order and overall percentage of
helping behaviour for each city are shown in Table 1.5 on the next page.
RESULTS - The three measures of helping
Helping was fairly consistent across the three measures. Most of the time those
cities where people tended to help in one situation were also where people
tended to help in the others. However, there were some interesting anomalies. In
New York 75% of participants helped the blind man cross the road but only 28%
helped the man with the leg injury pick up his magazines. In Mexico City people
were helpful to both the measures involving disability (92% for the blind man;
80% for the man with the bad leg) but much less so with the dropped pen (55%).
In a minority of cities – including Vienna, Budapest and Copenhagen – people
were most helpful in the dropped pen situation!
RESULTS - Relationships between helping and population variables
Correlations were calculated between helping behaviour and population
variables. Results are shown in Table 1.6. Only economic prosperity was found to
correlate significantly with helping, with a correlation of –0.43. The better off the
residents of a city are, the less helpful they are. Helping was not related at all to
population size or collectivism. The two least helpful cities – Kuala Lumpur and
New York – differed substantially in both size and collectivism/individualism.
Walking speed correlated weakly with helping behaviour.
The other significant finding was that people in countries with simpatia as
a cultural value were significantly more helpful than others, all falling in the
top half of the rank order. The mean rate of helping for simpatia countries was
82.87%, compared to 65.87% in non-simpatia countries.
CONCLUSIONS
1 Helping behaviour in non-emergency situations is not universal but varies
between cities.
2 There are large variations in the likelihood of receiving help in non-
emergency situations in different cultural contexts. There was however no
relationship between helping and collectivism/individualism, although there
was a significant difference between helping in simpatia and non-simpatia
cultures.
3 The only characteristic of cities measured in this study that correlates with
helping is economic prosperity: poorer cities tended to have higher rates of
helping. Helping was not related to city size or pace.
