1. Background As the number of bystanders increases, the personal responsibility that an individual bystander feels decreases. ... Diffusion of the responsibility is reduced, however, when a bystander believes that others are not in a position to help.
2. The overall aim of the study would be to investigate normal bystanders under real life conditions, and the effect on the speed and frequency of helping, and the race of the helper.
3. The question's the researcher is trying to answer is "Why do we sometimes help others?" "When may we not help others?" "What triggered this type of psychological research?"
4. Sampling method The sampling method was opportunity, because the participants were used based on if they were on the train at the same time that the experiment was being done. The sampling method was also volunteer, because of the participants that volunteered when asked if they would like to be apart of the experiment.
5. DV'S
5.1. -Verbal comments. -Frequency of help. -Speed of help. -Race of helper. -Gender of helper.
6. Procedures:
6.1. 4 teams of 4 researchers which consisted of two female observers and two male's. The victims were 3 black and 1 white, General studies students. The victim stood near a pole in the critical area, after about a certain amount of time ( usually 70 seconds) he staggered and collapsed. The victim was told to stay on the floor until he received help. If no help was offered either in the time frame of either 70 seconds or 150 seconds the model would stand in.
7. Results
7.1. In 21 out of the 103 trials soley 34 out of the whole 4500 moved away from the critical area.
7.2. Woman were significantly less likely to help, so 90% of the helpers were of the male gender.
7.3. The cane victim's received 95% og the time, but at the same time the drunk victim received help 50% of the time.
8. Conclusions
8.1. -A bystander who appears ill would be more likely to receive help rather than a bystander who appears drunk. Even if the ill and the drunk bystanders need the same exact help. --There was no apparent connection found between the number of bystanders and the speed of helping. -In mixed racial groups, there is an apparent tendency of same-race helping rather than helping people from a different race. This tendency is increased when the victim appears drunk rather than appearing ill.
9. Strengths
9.1. -The main strength of the study would be its high level of ecological validity, because the study was done in a real life environment and included an incident, which could and does happen. The real life incident was the victim that was wither portrayed as ill or drunk, and waiting to see if any of the bystanders were willing to help the victim.
9.2. -Another strength would be how many people the sample size consisted of. For example, the size of the sample was around 4450 men and women that were at the subway. Therefore, the sample size had a pretty excessive amount of people which increased the generalizability of the study.
10. B. The Victim There were four victims; therefore there was one per team. The victims were all male. The drunk victims had 38 trials and their characteristics were that they smelled like alcohol and had a bottle of alcohol in a brown bag on hand. The cane victim's number of trials were 65; and the characteristics were that they had to appear sober and carry a black cane.
11. why was the study conducted?The study was conducted was to investigate the diffusion of responsibility in a natural setting.
12. Definitions: Altruism: has been defined as behavior intended to help others having no benefit to ourselves Diffusion of responsibility: the thought process people display when figuring out if they should help someone in need or not. bystander effect: refers to the phenomenon in which the greater the number of people present, the less likely people are to help a person
13. The two research methods used in this study were field experiment & observation. The reason that the experiment was a field experiment was because the researcher wanted to look into the effect of several different variables on who responded to help, the speed of responding and the likelihood of responding. The reason that this experiment was
14. IV'S
14.1. -The type of victim -The race of the victim -The behavior/impact of the model time (time 70 or 150) -number of individuals in the carriage
15. Teams
15.1. A. The Models -The models were three white males and one black male that ages were from 24-29; they were all dressed relatively casually.
15.2. C. ObserversThe observers took note of the number and race of all the participants on the train; they also recorded the time it took for them to help,sex, and the race of the helper. Finally they noted the number of helpers, comments made by the helpers, and any movement they made farther from the "critical area."
16. Data Collection
16.1. Data collected was 103 trials over 2 months. These trials ran between 11am and 3pm on weekdays during the time period of April 15th to June 26th, 1968. 6-8 trials per day.
17. Qualitative Data
17.1. The qualitative data was the comments that had been made by the passengers. Some of those comments were, "I wish i could help him- I'm not strong enough." Another comments was “You feel so bad that you don’t know what to do.”
18. The cost reward model
18.1. Piliavin et al developed the Arousal: Cost-Reward Model to explain their results. The arousal might be increased by empathy with the victim, being relatively close to the emergency and the length of time the emergency continues for. For example, the drunk model is helped less frequently because the perceived cost is greater - helping a person that is drunk is more likely to cause social embarrassment or physical harm. Another example would be why the woman were less willing to help. The cost of not helping for woman were less looked down upon in social norms, because women are not really looked at to be helping random drunk men.
19. Weaknesses
19.1. -A weakness in the study was that it would be very hard to replicate by other researchers. The experiment can technically be replicated, but with different samples and it would be hard to get a hold of the same passenger. Participant variables may have affected the results of the study. For example, a participant variable might be a deaf or blind person, because they would be incapable of seeing or hearing signs of distress from the victim.
20. The individual vs. situational side
20.1. The individual side of the debate would be something, like a characteristic about the person would be the explanation of the way that he or she reacts to a certain situation. The situational side of the debate would be something about the situation that would explain the reaction of he or she. The way that the situational side of this debate would correlate with the study would be the fact that it is found difficult to not help someone in need of help when you are fact to face with the victim. The individual side of the debate would be if the bystander had been previously taught to feel empathetic toward people that are in need of help.
