Piliavin Subway Study

3 Key excerpts on "Piliavin Subway Study"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Positive Social Behavior and Morality

  Social and Personal Influences

  • Ervin Staub(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Another factor is a victim's visibility. The resulting low ambiguity is likely to contribute to a positive definition of need and minimize or eliminate a bystander effect. The lack of diffusion of responsibility in subway emergencies seems a reliable effect, replicated by Piliavin et al. in other studies (1975). A positive relationship holds between the number of people in a compartment and indices of help, probably re-flecting the greater probability of help when more people are present. Another influence on helping behavior in the Piliavin et al. (1969) study, however, which will soon be discussed at greater length, might have been that the subjects were in an express train, which had its next stop only 61/2 minutes after the emergency was staged. The extended exposure, with only minimal opportunity for escape from the situation, might have exer-cised strong normative pressure on subjects. Similar conditions existed in the other subway studies. These findings suggest (but do not prove) that when circumstances permit an onlooker to define a stimulus as a person clearly in physical dis-tress, other forms of social influence (such as diffusion of responsibility) are not likely to affect behavior. Further support for this conclusion comes from the finding (Staub, 1974a) previously described that after a confederate de-fined sounds coming from the adjoining room as distress sounds, both verbally and by initiating indirect help (going to get the experimenter), a 100 3. Determinants of People Helping Other People in Physical Distress verbal instruction to the subject not to go into the adjoining room did not decrease helping behavior. Perhaps once a stimulus is defined in such a way that it activates internal processes, such as norms or empathy or a prosocial goal, that promote helping, inhibiting social forces are less effective.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  OCR Psychology

  AS Core Studies and Psychological Investigations

  • Philip Banyard, Cara Flanagan(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  et al. proposed that the first thing that happens in an emergency situation is:

  1. Rewards.
  2. Costs.
  3. Arousal.
  4. Both a and b.

  Answers are on page 247.

  Exam-style questions

  There are three kinds of question that can be asked about the Piliavin et al. study, as represented here by sections A, B and C.

  See page x for further notes on the exam paper and styles of question.

  Section A questions

  1. Previous psychological research found that people didn’t help in emergency situations due to diffusion of responsibility:
     1. What is meant by the term ‘diffusion of responsibility’? [2]
     2. Explain why this effect was not observed in the study by Piliavin et al. [2]
  2. Piliavin et al. proposed a model of response to emergencies on the basis of the results from their study.
     1. Identify the two factors that influence a person’s decision to help or not. [2]
     2. Use these two factors to explain one of the results from the study. [2]
  3. In the study by Piliavin et al., describe what happened on each trial. [4]
  4. 1. Describe one ethical issue that was a problem in the study by Pilialvin et al. [2]
     2. Describe how Piliavin et al. might have dealt with this ethical issue. [2]
  5. Piliavin et al. designed a study where some of the researchers acted as ‘models’.
     1. Identify two of the model conditions. [2]
     2. Outline one conclusion that was drawn from these. [2]
  6. Piliavin et al. suggested that helping behaviour can be explained using an arousal/cost– reward model. Using this model suggest two ways of reducing arousal in the subway emergency. [4]
  7. Outline two practical problems that occurred in conducting the subway Samaritan study by Piliavin et al. [4]
  8. In the Piliavin et al. study outline one quantitative measure recorded by the observers and one qualitative measure. [4]
  9. Identify the four independent variables in study by Piliavin et al. [4]
  10. In the study by Piliavin et al. the victims were dressed identically as a control. Explain how one other control was used in this study. [4]

  Section B questions

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  Available until 27 Jan |Learn more

  International Express

  New Yorkers on the 7 Train

  • Stéphane Tonnelat, William Kornblum(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  The empirical research we have reviewed does contribute to a perception that the subway is a public place where its users typically avoid attention and retreat into their own mental worlds. This interior turn can create a hyperindividuated, self-absorbed social environment. The same research, however, also suggests that the reality is far more complex. The norms of civil inattention and preference for the role of spectator help explain why responsibility for action is diffused and why, for example, riders infrequently step out of the audience to fetch the bottle rolling across the car floor or take personal responsibility for other collective annoyances in the subway system. Nevertheless, communication and altruism are not absent on the trains.

  The possibility for altruism in the subway across the racial and ethnic backgrounds of riders was studied in a now-classic subway social experiment, “Good Samaritanism: An Underground Phenomenon?” by Irving Piliavin, Judith Rodin, and Jane Piliavin. They set up the following experimental “opportunity” for public altruism in the subway:

  A “victim” collapses on the subway during a non-stop 7½-minute journey. The trains are not particularly crowded when the staged event occurs, between the hours of 11:00 A.M . and 3:00 P.M . on a weekday. Sometimes he is helped, either by another passenger who steps forward after a short while, or after a number of minutes by a man (known as the model) who is also part of the experiment. The “victim” is either a black man or a white man acting as if he is drunk in one condition, and as if he is sober, but unsteady on his feet, in another (he carries a black cane). Two female observers record what happens.34

  The “victim” with a cane, regardless of his race, was helped more often and sooner than the drunk victim (sixty-two out of sixty-five trials for the cane victim, compared with nineteen out of thirty-eight trials for the drunk victim). Despite the differences in the time taken before help was offered, overall, subway riders were deemed “good Samaritans,” contrary to the common reputation of New York subway passengers.35

  None of these empirical studies or related journalistic accounts is entirely satisfactory. But they do describe a social order in which helping and staying back both occur, although with different probabilities. We learn from them that a given subway rider’s behavior is extremely situational, subject to relative and only vaguely understood variables. The studies show that the situations best indicating that people will not retreat behind their own sense of vulnerability and threatened territory are those in which they feel they are visible to others, “on the spot,” as well as how they actually interpret or categorize the situation.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book