Two Key Studies of Bystanderism (DP IB Psychology)

Key study one: Latane & Darley (1968)

Aim:

• To investigate the the bystander effect

• To investigate diffusion of responsibility (DOR) as the key explanation for bystanderism

 Participants:

• 72 students (59 female, 13 male) on an introductory psychology course from New York University

• The researchers had contacted the participants to ask for their participation but the details of the research were not revealed to the participants in advance

 Procedure: 

• Each participant was placed alone at a table with headphones and a microphone on it

• Each participant was then told that they would be taking part in a discussion of problems that college students faced:

  • due to the potentially sensitive nature of the topic they would be alone in the room

  • they would be using the microphone and headphones to conduct the discussion

• The participants were in the middle of listening to another person (a confederate) speaking when it became clear that the person on the other end of the intercom was having a seizure

• The independent variable was designed as follows:

  • The ‘alone’ condition: the participant believed that they alone were listening to the seizure

  • The 3-person group: the participant believed that one other person was listening in

  • The 6-person group:  the participant believed that four other people were listening in

• The dependent variable was measured as the time it took the participant to seek assistance to help the person who appeared to be having a seizure

Results:

• In the ‘alone’ condition 85% of the participants reported the seizure

• In the ‘3 person group’ 62% of the participants reported the seizure

• In the ‘6 person group’ 31% of the participants reported the seizure

  Conclusion: 

• DOR may to some extent explain the theory of the unresponsive bystander:

  • less help is likely to be given in an emergency if people believe that there are others present who can offer help

  • less help may be given due to factors such as:

    • thinking that someone else will help (more likely if in a larger group)

    • not feeling competent to offer help (again, this is more likely in a larger group, particularly if the emergency requires medical intervention)

Evaluation of Latané & Darley (1968)        

Strengths 

• This is a well-designed study with three distinct conditions of the independent variable

  • group size did seem to have an influence as to the speed and rate of helping, thus it supports the DOR hypothesis

• The researchers reported that many of the participants were genuinely distressed at the sound of someone appearing to have a seizure

  • This finding gives the study good external validity 

Limitations

• It is possible that some of the participants may have guessed the aim of the study, which would lower the validity of the findings

• There are ethical considerations to the procedure which mean that it would not be replicable today:

  • the participants were deceived as to the true nature of the seizures

  • as the participants were deceived they could not give fully informed consent

  • the participants experienced distress and shock when listening to the faked seizures which caused them harm

Key study two: Piliviavin et al. (1969)

Aim 

• To conduct a field experiment to investigate the effect of several different variables on the bystander effect:

• how quickly and how frequently help is given

• the type of victim (drunk or ill)

• the ethnicity/race of victim (Black or White) i.e. the Just World Hypothesis (JWH)

• DOR in specific conditions

• the cost-benefit analysis 

Participants:

• An opportunity sample of 4,450 passengers (55% white; 45% black)

• The passengers were those who used the New York subway between Harlem and The Bronx during the hours of 11am until 3pm

• The procedure was repeated on the same line over the course of several months

• The journey lasted 7.5 minutes without any stops.

Procedure:

• 4 confederates were used per trial: 

  • 2 females as observers

  • 1 White male aged 24 – 29 to model helping behaviour

  • 1 male victim aged 26 – 35 (either White or Black) 

  • The victims were either ‘drunk’ (he smelled of alcohol) or ‘ill’ (he held a cane)

  • The victims were dressed identically to each other 

• A total of 103 trials was conducted by alternating teams of researchers over the total course of the research’s duration

• The female confederates took seats and kept notes as unobtrusively as possible

• The male victim and male model stood near a pole in the centre of the train

• After passing the first station (approximately 70 seconds) the victim collapsed

• In the “no help” condition, the model did nothing until the train slowed to a stop, and then helped the victim to his feet

• In the “helping” condition, the model came to the victim’s assistance

• There were four different helping conditions used in both “drunk” and “cane” situations:

  • Critical area – early: The model stood in the critical area (the carriage in which the victim stood) and waited until after the train passed the fourth station, and then helped the victim (approximately 70 seconds after collapse)

  • Critical area – late: The model stood in the critical area and waited until after the train passed the sixth station before helping the victim (approximately 150 seconds after collapse)

  • Adjacent area – early: The model stood in the adjoining carriage, adjacent to the critical area and waited until after the train passed the fourth station, and then helped the victim

  • Adjacent area – late: The model stood in the adjacent area and waited until after the sixth station before helping

 Results:

The table shows the help given dependent on condition (victim type and ethnicity/race):

• Spontaneous help (before 70 seconds had passed) in the model trials was more likely in the ‘ill’ condition

• The victims received help for a total of 81/103 trials, and in 60% of these cases the help was received from more than one person

• Once the first person had moved to help, two or three others often followed quite quickly

• Men were more likely to help than women:

  • some of the women’s comments were along the lines of:

    • ‘It’s a man’s job to help’

    • ‘I wouldn’t know what to do’

• Same-race helping was noted in the Black/drunk condition more than in other conditions

Conclusion:

• DOR was not supported by the results of this study

  • in fact the larger the group the more help was given

• Help may have prompted by the need to reduce feelings of anxiety and guilt:

  • there was ‘no escape’ possible from the victim as the passengers were ‘trapped’ in a subway carriage

  • a cost-benefit analysis of the situation would have resulted in a higher cost for not helping than for helping

•  Type of victim is a factor in whether help is given, with the ‘ill’ victim receiving more help than the ‘drunk’ victim

Evaluation of Piliavin et al. (1969)

Strengths

• This was a highly organised, well-designed study that collected both quantitative and qualitative data:

  • quantitative data (speed and frequency of helping) derived from a large sample size is high in reliability

  • qualitative data (from the observations) is high in ecological validity due to the natural setting and unforced behaviour of the participants

• The finding that DOR may not occur outside of lab settings is hugely interesting and casts the topic of bystanderism in a new light.

Limitations

• The study might have been affected by a range of extraneous variables that were impossible to control:

  • mood of each passenger on the day (good mood is likely to increase helping behaviour)

  • some of the participants experiencing the procedure more than once if they regularly travelled on that route (which would create demand characteristics)

  • participants in the carriage may have obscured the view of the emergency, meaning that some data may have been lost or misinterpreted by the observers

• The ethics of the study were compromised due to

  • lack of informed consent

  • deception of participants

  • no right to withdraw

  • possible psychological harm and distress

  • no debriefing