OCR AS Psychology: Core Studies - Piliavin (4)

Results: The results showed that helping was very high. Type of Victim: The cane victim received spontaneous help on 62 out of the 65 trials, and the drunk victim received spontaneous help on 19 out of 38 trials. On 60% of the 81 trials where spontaneous help was given, more than one person offered help.Once one person had started to help, there were no differences for different victim conditions (black/white, cane/drunk) on the number of extra helpers that appeared. Race of Victim: The race of the victims made no significant difference to helping behaviour, but there was a slight tendency for same-race helping in the drunken condition. Gender of Helpers: 90% of helpers were male. Although there were more men present, this percentage was statistically significant. Race of Helpers: 64% of the helpers were white; this was what would be expected based on the racial distribution of the carriage. On the majority of the trials, the model did not get the opportunity to act, so no extensive analysis was made of the effect of the model. Speed/Frequency of Helping: Diffusion of responsibility was not evident. The diffusion of responsibility hypothesis predicts that helping behaviour would decrease as the number of bystanders increases. In fact the field experiment found that the quickest help came from the largest groups. However, in the earlier laboratory experiments there was only one participant and the other bystanders were confederates. Nobody left the carriage during the incident (mainly because the train was moving), on 21 of the 103 trials a total of 34 people left the critical area, particularly when the victim appeared to be drunk. Qualitative Data: More comments were obtained on drunk than cane trials and most of these were obtained when no one helped until after 70 seconds; this could be due to the discomfort passengers felt in sitting inactive in the presence of the victim, perhaps hoping that others would confirm that inaction was appropriate. e.g from women passengers: “It’s for men to help him”