| Outline Research Relating To Human Altruism And/or Bystander Behaviour Essay, Research Paper
(b)Assess the effects of cultural differences on such behaviour
A number of studies have been
carried out into bystander behaviour. There has been research into the
influence of situational factors, the nature of the helper, the nature of the
victim and into how the victim is perceived by the helper. Latanane and Darley
produced a five-stage model of bystander behaviour to try to explain why people
help or not. The attribution theory and causal schemata theory (Kelly 1973)
were introduced to try to explain how we make attributions about a situation.
Piliavin has created a model of bystander behaviour called the cost/benefit
model. All of these theories and studies show how and why people help others in
certain situations. ??????????? Latanane and
Darley carried out research into the influence of situational factors on
helping behaviour/bystander behaviour. They asked male college students to sit
in a waiting room and fill in a questionnaire believing that they were about to
take part in a study about people?s attitude towards urban life. The subjects
were either alone or in groups of three. Smoke was poured through a small vent
in the wall and the subjects reactions were watched for six minutes. When
people were on their own within two minutes 50% reported smoke and 75% reported
it within six minutes. When the subjects were in groups only 12% reported smoke
within two minutes and 38% within six minutes. 62% carries on working for six
minutes although the room was full of smoke. The people who were working
together claimed that they were looking to each other for guidance as to how to
behave. Because non of them knew how to behave no one had moved and the
situation was redefined as a harmless one. This redefinition of the situation
was called ?pluralistic ignorance? and this can only occur when the subjects
are not fully aware of all the facts of the situation. This shows the effects
of group influence on people?s behaviour. The group all looked to each other
how to behave and resented working independently. ??????????? The number of
bystanders also affects whether people help or not. Latanane (1981) suggests
that the responsibility is shifted when many witnesses are present so more
witnesses can actually mean less helping. This is called the social impact
theory. Darley and Latanane (1968) conducted a study into the number of
bystanders and how they affect helping. Subjects were supposed to be discussing
social problems with other participants over an intercom system heard what they
believed to be one of the group having a seizure. He was trying to explain that
he had seizures in times of stress. They measured who helped within four
minutes. When the subjects believed that there were two in the group 85% tried
to help, when there were 3 in the group 62% tried to help and when there were 5
other people in the group only 31% intervened. They concluded that the
participants had a conflict between a fear of making fools of themselves and
ruining the experiment by over reacting and their own guilt and shame at doing
nothing. In Latanane and Darley?s experiment the other people?s behaviour could
not be observed and said that someone must have intervened. Latanane and
Darley?s experiment showed dissolution rather than diffusion of responsibility.
This study is therefore not useful for showing the effects of diffusion of
responsibility. Milgram (1970) also proposed a theory
called the stimulus overload theory. This suggested that people in cities are
so used to emergency situations that they treat them as normal everyday ones.
These situations occur more often so people don?t help. People from smaller
towns however do not see this emergencies so often so are more likely to help
as it attracts more attention. This is supported by Gelfand et al. (1973).
People from larger towns and cities are less likely to help because it
interferes with people?s privacy which is more difficult to find in cities
(Milgram, 1973). The proximity of the bystanders is said to have an adverse
effect on people?s potential helpfulness. The Social Impact theory by Latanane
(1981) also says that as the remoteness between the bystander and the victim
increases then the less responsible the bystander feels. E.g., someone asking
for donations on the telephone is less likely to get any than someone asking in
the street face-to-face. Piliavin (1969) showed that people were just as likely
to help on a crowded subway as an un-crowded one showing that people found it
harder to refuse help in a face-to-face situation such as an enclosed subway. ??????????? Latanane and
Darley created a cognitive 5 stage model of helping behaviour to show how
people decide whether to help in a situation or not. If the bystander answers
no to any question then no help will be given. The model starts off with
whether the bystander notices the event, if so is it an emergency, they then
have to assume responsibility and decide that they know what to do. If they get
this far then the have to implement their decision and help the person in need.
They have several reasons why people decide no: ·
Diffusion of responsibility ? the responsibility for
helping is being shared with other people around. ·
Pluralistic ignorance ? other people not responding
makes us think that the situation is not an emergency. ·
Perceived competence ? whether you think you can deal
with the situation. Piliavin et al. (1969) conducted a study
called the Good Samaritan study. This was to investigate the effects on the
speed and amount of help given of the type of victim, the race of the victim,
the presence of helping models and the size of the group witnessing. The
experimenters used victims who were black and white and all ages, they were
instructed to collapse after 70 seconds and remain on the floor until they were
helped. A model was instructed to help after 70 seconds if nobody else did.
Over 93% helped before the model arrived, 60% involved more than one helper. No
diffusion of responsibility occurred with increased group sizes. A victim
appearing ill received more help than someone who appeared drunk. 100% helped
the person with the cane and 81% helped the drunken victim, help was also
offered more quickly for the cane victim. It was found that men were more
likely to help than women were. The longer the emergency went on without any
help being offered the less impact the model had and the more bystanders were
likely to leave the area. The findings don?t support Latanane and Darley?s
study because there was diffusion of responsibility with increased group size
with Latanane and Darley but not with Piliavin. In emergencies people look to
other to see how to act. The nature of the helper and the nature of
the victim are shown to also have an effect on whether we help or not. Mood,
sex, personality and the physical state of the helper can influence a person?s
decision. If people are particularly caring and have a natural tendency to help
then they will do so. Whether the helper feels self-conscious will affect
whether they help and what their personal feelings and views are. If the person
is a strong racist or is very against people drinking then they are less likely
to help them. Isen (1984) said that people don?t help others when they are in a
good mood because they don?t want to spoil the good mood they are in. Likewise,
someone in a bad mood might help alleviate the bad feeling, especially due to
guilt, by helping someone. This is described as the negative state relief
hypothesis. Piliavin et al. (1969) said that men are more likely to help than
women and Bickman (1974) found that women were less likely to give money to a
stranger and other studies have found that females are reluctant to help.
McGovern (1976) said that people who fear embarrassment are less likely to
help. Bierhoff et al. (1991) drew up a table of personality traits of people
who would help and who were less likely to help. Psychologists have been
unsuccessful in pinpointing a certain personality type most likely to give
help. Steels and Southwick (1985) showed that people who had consumed more
alcohol were more likely to help others because the alcohol reduces inhibitions
and the awareness of potential dangers. The nature of the victim influences the
helpfulness of the bystander too. ?Deservingness? of help, the seriousness of
the situation, the victim?s physical appearance, their race, how similar they
are to the helper and their general appearance are all influential factors.
Piliavin et al. (1969) conducted a study in a railway carriage in which a
stooge collapsed, sometimes carrying a cane and other times with a brown paper
bag and a jacket smelling of alcohol. The victim with the cane received more
help (90% within 70 seconds) than the victim with the bag (20%). Another
experiment by Piliavin (1972) did an experiment where someone collapsed and bit
a capsule of red dye to resemble blood. The amount of help was reduced to 60%
and people sought the help of others who they saw as being more able to cope
with the situation. They also studied the effects of the victim having a
birthmark on their face. Helping dropped from 86% when the victim was
disfigured to 61% when they were. West et al. (1975) found a black person who
had broken down in a car received help from 97% of people who were black. When
the victim was white, they received help from white people. Piliavin (1969)
found that there was a slight racial bias if the victim was drunk. WE are more
likely to help people who we see as being similar to ourselves, accounting for
the racial bias that has been found. People who are dressed smartly are more
likely to receive help than someone who is untidy (Bickman, 1974). Victims are
more likely to be helped if they are seen as deserving causes rather than the
cause of their own misfortune, like the drunken people in Piliavin?s study. The causal schemata theory proposed by Kelly
(1973), is when we make attributions about a situation using our previous
schema, we take the obvious explanation or situation without considering other
causes. We use stored information that has come from our schemas to make sense
of a situation. We seem to use the ?discounting principle? meaning that we
discount all other possible causes in favour of the one most familiar to us.
Fiske and Taylor (1991) said that we use a ?causal shorthand? to explain
behaviour, our own or other peoples, quickly. As Piliavin said we are more
likely to help people who are seen as deserving. This causal schemata theory
links to this because if we know someone who has been in the same situation or
we have then we will remember this and help them because we know how they feel.
If we see someone in trouble then we use our past experiences (stored in
schema) to decide whether to help them, if we have been in the same or similar
situation then we will have the relevant schema. Piliavin et al. (1981) proposed the
Arousal: Cost-Reward model to explain how people in social situations weigh up
the costs and benefits of behaving in a particular way. It suggests that people
work through three stages when they come across a person in need: 1. Physiological
arousal ? when seeing someone in need we experience certain physiological
responses e.g. increased heart rate, sweating. 2. Labelling
the arousal ? physiological arousal can lead to someone labelling it as
distress or empathy but Piliavin believed that empathy was a more likely
response. 3. Evaluating
the consequences ? we weigh up the costs and benefits of helping people or not. The model emphasises the interaction between two sets of
factors: situation, bystander and victim characteristics and cognitive and
affective reactions. Situational characteristics are things like the victim
asking for help or not. Bystander characteristics include trait factors (e.g.
whether the person is empathic or not) and state factors (e.g. whether the
potential helper is in a good mood or not). Victim characteristics include such
as the victims appearance and race. Whether helping occurs depends on how the
potential helper interprets their arousal. If the arousal is associated with
the victims distress then helping is more likely to occur because the distress in
unpleasant (Batson and Coke, 1981). The way in which the distress is relieved
depends on the rewards involved in helping and not helping. Piliavin is
suggesting that people weigh up the costs and benefits of helping and not
helping and this hedonic calculus determines whether they help or not. Rewards
from helping can be enhanced self-esteem or even financial reward. Rewards for
not helping can be free time and the ability to carry on normally (Darley and
Batson, 1973). The costs of helping someone can be the loss of time, effort,
physical danger, embarrassment and disruption of normal everyday activity. The
costs of not helping can be guilt, disapproval from others and discomfort (both
cognitive and emotional) associated with knowing that another person is
suffering. When the costs of helping and the costs of not helping are both low
then the likelihood of someone helping is quite high but the bystanders
personal differences, expectations and norms will influence their final
decision. ??????????? Piliavin?s
model tries to accommodate much of the previous research on the situational
influences and helper. The model is therefore quite useful to bring all the
research together but doesn?t take into account some influences such as the
helper?s state of mind. It does draw all the previous research together so
accounts for most factors. The causal schemata theory by Kelly only takes into
account the past experience of the helper and doesn?t allow for the possible
ambiguity of the situation or the mood of the helper. Although past experiences
are important in influencing our behaviour they aren?t the only thing that does
as this theory suggests.b) Assess the effects
of cultural difference on such behaviour. In some cultures, collectivist ones for example,
people are more likely to seek help than those from more individualistic
cultures like a large city according to Nadler (1986). People from collectivist
cultures like the Soviet Union are more likely to seek help from those they are
close to and won?t look for help outside their own small circle of family and
friends. People are therefore willing to help in these cultures but the help
won?t always be accepted if it is not from someone within the same society.
Therefore helping behaviour is less likely to occur in individualist cultures.
The problems with labelling societies as individualist and collectivist are
what is collectivist and what is individualist? What is classed as a society?
And if the culture is ?collectivist? then how do you study the behaviour
because the researcher wouldn?t be part of the culture. Feldman (1968) found that foreigners in Greece
asking a favour were more likely to receive help than if they were locals. This
shows that, as Collett and O?Shea (1976) found foreigners are seen as more
important and worthy of help than the locals are. Helping behaviour is more
likely to occur in these places when the people being offered help are
foreigners. This shows that people see outsiders as more worthy of help than
the local people. This contrasts with Nadler?s findings who said that help was
only offered to people from within the same culture. Gender also has an effect on whether people ask for
and receive help or not. Moghaddam (1998) found twice the number of women than
men in the US and Britain seek help for depression. Weissman et al. (1991)
discovered that male alcoholics outnumbered female alcoholics. In different
cultures women and men are treated differently, there are certain expectations
on both men and women that vary from culture to culture. In Western society men
are expected to be ?tough? and independent whereas women are expected to be ?in
need? therefore preventing men from seeking help as much as women. This
supports Piliavin who said that men were more likely to help than women because
if women are seen as in need and men are tough then women aren?t seen as being
able to help and men should be seen to be helping to fulfil this stereotype. In India, according to Miler and Bershoff (1998) the
Indians were just as likely to help someone they didn?t like as someone they
did like compared to the Americans who were less likely to help someone they
didn?t like. In collectivist cultures everybody lives together to survive and
support each other. In individualist cultures e.g. a large city everybody goes about
their own business and gets on with their own lives. They are, therefore,? less likely to ask for or receive help
because it is seen as interfering and infringing on a person?s privacy
especially as it is hard to find in a large city (Milgram, 1977). The findings of the laboratory and field studies on
helping behaviour are conflicting. Laboratory studies especially those done
with Americans, show that people will go out of their way to avoid seeking help
from others. Field studies, on the other hand, show that people, especially
Asians, will go out of their way to seek help. This is not down to cultural
differences alone. People in a laboratory situation will interpret the
situation differently to people in a natural setting. The natural setting will
reduce demand characteristics and has more ecological validity therefore this
will be reflected in the findings. In the real world people actively seek out
the help of others to extend their social relationships (Moghaddam, 1998) Different cultures expect different things and
people within these cultures are brought up with different values that comply
to ?the norm? of that particular culture e.g. females are ?in need? and males
are ?tough? and ?independent?. In other cultures, women are expected to work for
a living e.g. Israel but in more European cultures, women are expected to stay
at home and look after the children. The expectations of a particular culture
will influence whether a person helps another or not and whether they seek
help. The person?s personality, both the potential helper and the ?victim? will
also influence the helping behaviour and the extent of the helping behaviour.
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