 Emergency Situations: Bystander Behaviour (handout)

 Read page 263 of the Course Companion and answer the questions in the ‘Apply your knowledge’ box.

 Do you know this story?

 Is religious conviction a factor in people’s willingness to help strangers in need?

 Participants: 40 seminary students  Aim: To find out whether there’s a correlation between religious devotion and helping behaviour.

 Participants: 40 seminary students  Aim: To find out whether there’s a correlation between religious devotion and helping behaviour.  Peronality questionnaire concerning how religious participants were.

 Participants: 40 seminary students  Aim: To find out whether there’s a correlation between religious devotion and helping behaviour.  Peronality questionnaire concerning how religious participants were.  2 conditions:  Give a talk on the Good Samaritan parable  Give a talk on jobs

 IV: whether or not seminarians were told to hurry.  DV: to what extent the seminarians stopped to help.

 Findings:  Overall 40% helped

 Findings:  Overall 40% helped  63% of the low-hurry condition

 Findings:  Overall 40% helped  63% of the low-hurry condition  45% of the intermediate hurry condition

 Findings:  Overall 40% helped  63% of the low-hurry condition  45% of the intermediate hurry condition  10% of the late condition

 Which speech the seminarians were about to give made little difference to their helping behaviour.

 What do these results suggest?

 How participants had completed the initial questionnaire made no difference to their helping behaviour.

 The results suggest that situational factors played a bigger part in helping behaviour than dispositional factors in this study.

 Read the newspaper article on what happened on the night of  Kitty Genovese’s death.

 Latane and Darley came up with the term bystanderism.  Read pages 264 – 265 of the Course Companion and make notes on Bystanderism Diffusion of responsibility Pluralistic ignorance

 Diffusion of responsibility  Participants told they’d be interviewed over an intercom Heard another ‘participant’ choking

 Diffusion of responsibility  When participants thought they were the only one in a position to help, they helped 85% of the time.

 Diffusion of responsibility  When participants thought they were the only one in a position to help, they helped 85% of the time.  This dropped to 64% when they thought there was one other person.

 Diffusion of responsibility  When participants thought they were the only one in a position to help, they helped 85% of the time.  This dropped to 64% when they thought there was one other person.  And dropped to 31% when they thought there were 4 other people present.

 Pluralistic Ignorance  In a group situation, people often look to others to know how to react

 What is meant by informational social influence?

 Make a note of this.

 Latane & Darley asked participants to wait in a waiting room.

 They heard the sound of the female experimenter fall and cry out in another room.

 Participants were much more likely to help when they were alone than when they were in the company of a confederate who did not react to the experimenter’s cries.  Why do you think this might be?

 In real life, emergency situations are often ambiguous. Observers may not always realize that their help is needed.  People are also less likely to intervene if they think there is a relationship between people, e.g. in the case of domestic violence.

 Make some notes about both Latane and Darley’s 1968 and 1969 studies.  Use the FAME framework.  Accompany your notes with a sketch to help you remember the studies later.

 Watch this clip and make brief notes about the work of Latane and Darley.  BBC_OU Open2.net - Eyewitness - Bystander intervention.flv

 Here’s another example of pluralistic ignorance, informational social influence and the bystander effect.

 Watch this interview with Latane and Darley.