1. Levine et al. (2001) Cross-cultural differences in helping strangers

2. Task
Imagine you are alone in a city. You require help (you could be lost, you might need money, etc.).
Which city would you most like to be in? Where do you think you would be most likely to get help?
Where would you least like to be? Where do you think you would get the least help?

3. Links between your answers
Are there any links between the cities that were chosen?
Are the cities all in similar countries?
Are they culturally similar?

4. Previous research
Differences in helping behaviour have been noted around the world – although there is very little scientific evidence.
Previous research often tests the popular hypothesis that the tendency to help strangers declines as the size of a city increases.

5. Levine’s general idea
Levine wanted to conduct a cross-cultural study (a study that is done in multiple cultures) to look at levels of spontaneous help.
Levine wanted to scientifically test cross-cultural differences.

6. Three aims The study had three main goals:
To see if the tendency of people within a city to offer non-emergency help to strangers was stable across different situations in which people needed help.
To see if helping of strangers varies across cultures.
To identify the characteristics of those communities in which strangers are more (or less) likely to be helped.

7. Method
In each country, data were collected in either the largest city or another major city (23 in total, all had populations of 230,000 or more):
Austria (Vienna) San Salvador (El Salvador) Romania (Bucharest)
Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) India (Kolkata (Calcutta)) Singapore (Singapore)
Bulgaria (Sofia) Israel (Tel Aviv) Spain (Madrid)
China (Shanghai) Italy (Rome) Sweden (Stockholm)
Costa Rica (San Jose) Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) Thailand (Bangkok)
Czech Republic (Prague) Mexico (Mexico City) Taiwan (Taipei)
Denmark (Copenhagen) The Netherlands (Amsterdam) United States of America Hungary (Budapest) Malawi (Lilongwe) (New York City)

8. Activity 1
Have a go at labelling the cities on a world map (Activity 1).
Check your answers on the next slide.

9. Copenhagen Stockholm Bucharest Calcutta Budapest Amsterdam Prague
Madrid
Vienna
New York City
Rome
Sofia
Shanghai
Tel Aviv
San Jose
Taipei
Mexico City
Bangkok
Singapore
San Salvador
Kuala Lumpur
[CE] The cities listed on slide 7 should all appear at a click at the correct places on the map:
Lilongwe
Rio de Janeiro

10. Data collection
Collection at the various international sites was conducted by students who were either travelling to foreign countries or returning to their home countries for the summer, or by cross-cultural psychologists and their students in other countries who volunteered to assist the authors.
Are there any issues with this method?
Researcher bias? Issue with the researchers being students?

11. Helping behaviours
Originally there were five separate helping behaviours: Dropped pen; Hurt leg; Helping blind person across the street; Asking for change; Mislaid letters.
Two were removed (Asking for change and Mislaid letters) due to issues. Why do you think this was?
Asking for change – The concept of money was too different across cultures, with some countries lacking small change.
Mislaid letters – In some places people didn’t want to touch envelopes in case they contained explosive, and some areas didn’t have postboxes so it required a lot of effort. Also, in some countries letters are not very common due to illiteracy.
This leaves three different non-emergency helping behaviours.

12. Dropped pen
Walking at a carefully practised, moderate pace (15 paces/10 seconds), experimenters walked towards a lone pedestrian passing in the opposite direction. When 10 to 15 feet from the subject, the experimenter reached into his pocket and accidentally, without appearing to notice, dropped his pen behind him, in full view of the subject, and continued walking past the subject.
A total of 214 men and 210 women were approached.
Participants were scored as having helped if they called back to the experimenter that he had dropped the pen and/or picked up the pen and brought it to the experimenter.

13. Hurt leg
Walking with a heavy limp and wearing a large and clearly visible leg brace,
experimenters ‘accidentally’ dropped and unsuccessfully struggled to reach down for a pile of magazines as they came within 20 feet of a passing pedestrian.
A total of 253 men and 240 women were approached.
Helping was defined as offering to help and/or beginning to help without offering.

14. Helping a blind person cross the street
Experimenters, dressed in dark glasses and carrying white canes, acted the role of a blind person needing help getting across the street. The confederates were trained for the role.
Experimenters attempted to locate downtown corners with pedestrian crossings, traffic signals, and moderate, steady pedestrian flow. They stepped up to the corner just before the change to the green man, held out their cane, and waited until someone offered help. A trial was terminated (and recorded as no help) after 60 seconds or when the light turned red, whichever occurred first, after which the experimenter walked away from the corner.
A total of 281 trials were conducted.
Helping was scored if participants, at a minimum, informed the experimenter that the light was green.

15. Method detail
Each of the three helping measures was done in two or more locations, in main city centre districts, during main business hours, on clear days, during the summer months of one or more years between 1992 and The study was not published until 2001 as it took a long time to collate the data.
For the first two measures, which required approaching pedestrians, only individuals walking alone were selected. Children (younger than 17 years old) were excluded, as were people who might not be capable of helping nor be expected to help (e.g. those who were physically disabled, very old, carrying heavy packages, etc.).
Participants were selected randomly, usually by approaching the second potential participant who crossed a predetermined line.

16. Standardised procedure
All experimenters were male and of college age (US university students). They were all trained for their roles (they practised their roles together to ensure consistency) and had detailed instructions on how to act and how to score participants.

17. Rank
City, country
Overall helping index
(% helped)
Dropped pen
Hurt leg
Blind person 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
San Jose, Costa Rica
Lilongwe, Malawi
Calcutta, India
Vienna, Austria
Madrid, Spain
Copenhagen, Denmark
Shanghai, China
Mexico City, Mexico
San Salvador, el Salvador
Prague, Czech Republic
Stockholm, Sweden
Budapest, Hungary
Bucharest, Romania
Tel Aviv, Israel
Rome, Italy
Bangkok, Thailand
Taipei, Taiwan
Sofia, Bulgaria
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Singapore, Singapore
New York, United States
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
93.33
91.33 86
82.67 81
79.33
77.67
76.67
75.67
74.67 75 72 71
68.67 68
63.33 61 59 57
53.67 48
44.67
40.33
100 79 93 63 88 89 55 92 76 66 67 35 65 69 54 45 31 26 80 95 77 43 70 62 49 28 41 58 83 42 50
Results
Can you spot any errors in the table? This was an error made by Levine et al.

18. Results Think back to the three aims. What do the results tell us?
1 To see if the tendency of people within a city to offer non-emergency help to strangers was stable across different situations in which people needed help.
Results: A general tendency across situations.
2 To see if helping of strangers varied across cultures.
Results: There was a large variance between nations.
3 To identify the characteristics of those communities in which strangers are more (or less) likely to be helped.
Results: More detail is needed to discuss this aim.

19. Community variables
These four factors were also recorded and a correlational analysis between each factor and helping behaviours was conducted.
Population size
Economic indicator
Cultural values
Walking speed

20. Population size
While all cities had populations of more than 230,000, there were still differences in population size.
Population size for each metropolitan area was taken from the most current United Nations Demographic Yearbook.

21. Economic indicator (PPP)
PPP is an indicator of economic well-being that measures how much the average income in a country is capable of purchasing.
For example, the US has a PPP of 25,860, whereas Malawi has a PPP of 600. Think of PPP as an indicator of how rich a country is.

22. Cultural values
Six internationally expert cross-cultural psychologists were asked to rate the 23 countries in the sample on the dimension of individualism-collectivism.
Countries were rated on a 10-point scale (1 = the most collectivistic, 10 = the most individualistic).
The six expert ratings were averaged to produce an overall individualism-collectivism score for each country.

23. Walking speed
Male and female walking speed, an indicator of the pace of life, was measured over a distance of 60 feet in the same downtown locations as the helping measures.
In most cities, 35 men and 35 women were timed. From this an overall walking speed for the city was calculated.

25. Community variables results
Results of these correlation analyses confirmed that the only statistically significant relationship was between the measure for purchasing power and both overall levels of helping and helping of the blind person. This suggests that cities with lower levels of purchasing power tend to be more helpful.
Although not statistically significant, there was also a small relationship between walking speed and overall helping, with participants in cities with a faster pace of life being somewhat less likely to offer help.

26. Conclusions
Purchasing power is negatively correlated with helping behaviour, although no clear reason for this can be found. Why do you think this is?
There was no link between countries with a high overall helping index or a low overall helping index. However, cities from Latin America and Spain showed higher levels of help than other cities (see next slide for more information).
Many variables showed trends but were not significant. Could this be due to methodological problems?

27. Simpatia or simpatico
That cities from Latin America and Spain showed higher levels of help than other cities can be attributed to the importance of the cultural script (a set of instructions that people follow) of simpatia (in Spanish) or simpatico (in Portuguese) in Latin American and Hispanic cultures.
These terms refer to a range of amiable social qualities – to be friendly, nice, agreeable and good-natured.
Helping strangers is also part of this script.

28. Activity 2
Complete the cartoon strip activity to summarise the study (see Activity 2).
the cartoon strip has very vague headings. Depending on your group’s understanding of the study this could be adjusted.

29. Evaluation Validity Ecological validity Reliability Ethics Other
Are there any issues with the experimenters?
Did they control for any of these issues?
Ecological validity
Are the scenarios for helping common in everyday real life?
Are all scenarios equally common? Does this affect the results?
Reliability
Did all experimenters behave in the same way?
Sample size?
Ethics
Did participants give consent?
Were they debriefed?
Did they come to any harm?
Other
Is this research useful?
Why is it important to conduct cross-cultural research?

30. Links to debates
Culture seems to play a big role in helping. Does this study support the individual or situational side of the debate? What is affecting behaviour? Does this reside within the individual or is it a situational factor?
There are differences in the levels of help received across the different scenarios. Would this support the individual or the situational side of the debate?

31. Links to areas/perspectives
Levine et al.’s study falls under the social area because the study looks at how social variables (such as a city’s population and how well off the people in a city are) impact behaviour.

32. Links to key themes
This study suggests that responses to people in need vary across the world. Therefore culture has a big impact on the responses given.
When compared to the classic study of Piliavin, this study is useful as it suggests that the findings from Piliavin may be due to culture. New York finished 22nd out of 23 in overall help, which may have influenced Piliavin’s results.
Individual, social and cultural diversity – Levine’s study clearly shows how culture plays a role in helping behaviour. It also sheds light on the results of Piliavin and helps us see these results in a new way (taking into account the role of culture).

33. Piliavin vs. Levine
Use your comparison sheet to compare the two studies. Below are some questions that may help you.
Study setting?
Consent?
Cross cultural?
How many measures were used?
Sample size?
Confederates?