1. A Study on Differences in Helping Behavior across Cultures
Levine et al. (1990)
A Study on Differences in Helping Behavior across Cultures

2. A study on Cultural Differences in Prosocial Behavior – Levine 1990
Aim: To investigate differences in helping behavior in in 36 American cities and 23 large cities
Research method: Field experiments
Procedure: The researchers created non emergency situations with confederates in public. For example, dropping a pen, helping a blind person across a busy intersection, providing someone with change, to stamp an addressed letter that has been dropped. The helping rate of bystanders was measured

3. Locations
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
Singapore, Singapore
New York, USA
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
Singapore, Singapore
New York, USA
Prague, Czech Republic
Stockholm, Sweden
Budapest, Hungary
Bucharest, Romania
Tel Aviv, Israel
Rome, Italy
Bangkok, Thailand
Taipei, Taiwan
Sofia, Bulgaria
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
Prague, Czech Republic
Stockholm, Sweden
Budapest, Hungary
Bucharest, Romania
Tel Aviv, Israel
Rome, Italy
Bangkok, Thailand
Taipei, Taiwan
Sofia, Bulgaria
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
Different colors mean different continents. So the cultures studied were pretty varied

4. Retrieving A Dropped Pen! !
A guy accidently drops a pen to see if anyone would help

5. Hurt Leg ! !
Drop a book to see if anyone would help

6. Blind Person Crossing Street ! !
Would see if anyone helped a blind man

7. Change For a Quarter
A quarter is left on the ground in plain sight. The person would ask if anyone had any loose change to borrow. People that helped would point the quarter out.

8. Lost Letter ! !
A letter is left lying on the ground next to a mailbox to see if anyone would put it in. Most people just ran because they were afraid of a bomb.

9. Findings
People tended to be friendlier in towns compared to big cities
Cities with a high population density were less helpful
Cities with low purchasing power per citizen tended to be more helpful than cities with high purchasing power per citizen.
Helping rates were higher in cities with less stressed people and in cultures that valued social responsibility.

10. Overall helping rates, examples
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 93.33
Calcutta, India – 82.67
Copenhagen, Denmark – 77.67
Shanghai, China – 76.67
Stockholm, Sweden – 72.00
Bangkok, Thailand – 61.00
Singapore, Singapore – 48.00
New York, USA – 44.67
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – 40.33

11. Evaluation
Helping norms of a city may vary during different time periods
There were many exceptions to the general rule
Helping strangers may be risky in many cities (e.g. scams)
There are many possible confounding variables in the field experiments (e.g. illiteracy level for the letter test
The experiment has high external validity
Findings similar to Pepitone (1999)

12. Conclusion Cities have different culture of helping behavior
Helping behavior seems to be affected by a multitude of variables
The individualism-collectivism dimension is not a good predictor of helping behavior
Population density is the best predictor of helping behavior
Can provide information about helping behavior across the world