2- Social psych

Social

-Key theme 1= Responses to people in authority

-Key theme 2= Responses to people in need 

Assumptions:

• Social context impacts on how people behave. This social context includes the actual, imagined or implied presence of others.
• An individual's behaviour is affected by further situational factors e.g. the environment that we find ourselves in
• A major influence on people's behaviour, thought processes and emotions are other people and the society that they have created.

+= Often high in eco V as often field expts which makes it easier to generalise to the real world, Useful: practical applications

-= Unethical? high eco v often brings ethical issues e.g. consent, Reductionist as fails to ackowledge individual diffs as the focus is on the social context.

Piliavin et al (1969)

-Background:

• Case of Kitty Genovese 1964- 28 y/o woman was brutally attacked outside her apartment building. It was reported that her struggles and screams awoke 38 of her neighbours- none of which went to help her, 1 person called the police after around 20 mins.
• Diffusion of responsibility= the more people in a sit the more people can deal with the problem, everyone thinks someone else can help and in the end no one does anything.
• Ambiguity of the sit= we are unsure of the sit and therefore we don't help because we don't want to embarrass ourselves. 
• Pluralistic ignorance= we look to other people to see how they are reacting
• These are all likely to lead to 'Bystander apathy'
• Background study- Field expt by Bryan & Test (1967) showed that individuals are more likely to be good samaritans if they have just observed another individual performing a helpful act- 'modelling effect'

-Aim:

• To stage an emergency on the NY subway to test bystander intervention in a natural setting. 

-Design:

• Field expt, P obbservation
• IV= 1)type of victim (lame or drunk) 2)race of victim (black or white) 3)presence/absence of a helping model 4)no.of passengers (quasi)
• DV= speed of help, how many helpers, race of helper, gender of helper, which type of victim was helped most, comments made and if passengers left the critical area
• There were 16 researchers = 4 teams of 4 (1 black male) M= victim or model F=observers
• Models= all white males, aged between 24-29 dressed casually. Condition= critical early= helped after 70s, critical late= 150s after, adjacent early= 70s after, adjacent late= 150s after
• Victims= all males, aged between 26-35, 3 white, 1 black. All dressed identically. A)Drunk-38 trials victim smelled of alcohol and carried a paper bag B)Lame- 65 trials victim appeared sober and carried a black cane

-Sample:

• Opportunity sample
• Approx 4450 travellers
• 55% W : 45% B
• Avg no. in carriage= 43

-Procedure:

• Ps= passengers on subway at the time= 'unsolicited ps' (no permission given)
• Critical area= where incident happened
• Adjacent area= next to the critical area 
• 103 trials between 11am and 3pm during April 15th to June 26th 1968. Train line journey chosen specifically as had a 7.5min journey time with no stops. 
• Observers sat…