People Help example essay topic

(b) Assess the effects of cultural differences on such behaviour A number of studies have been carried out into bystander behaviour. There has been research into the influence of situational factors, the nature of the helper, the nature of the victim and into how the victim is perceived by the helper. Latanane and Darley produced a five-stage model of bystander behaviour to try to explain why people help or not. The attribution theory and causal schemata theory (Kelly 1973) were introduced to try to explain how we make attributions about a situation.

Piliavin has created a model of bystander behaviour called the cost / benefit model. All of these theories and studies show how and why people help others in certain situations. Latanane and Darley carried out research into the influence of situational factors on helping behaviour / bystander behaviour. They asked male college students to sit in a waiting room and fill in a questionnaire believing that they were about to take part in a study about peoples attitude towards urban life. The subjects were either alone or in groups of three. Smoke was poured through a small vent in the wall and the subjects reactions were watched for six minutes.

When people were on their own within two minutes 50% reported smoke and 75% reported it within six minutes. When the subjects were in groups only 12% reported smoke within two minutes and 38% within six minutes. 62% carries on working for six minutes although the room was full of smoke. The people who were working together claimed that they were looking to each other for guidance as to how to behave. Because non of them knew how to behave no one had moved and the situation was redefined as a harmless one. This redefinition of th situation was called pluralistic ignorance and this can only occur when the subjects are not fully aware of all the facts of the situation.

This shows the effects of group influence on peoples behaviour. The group all looked to each other how to behave and resented working independently. The number of bystanders also affects whether people help or not. Latanane (1981) suggests that the responsibility is shifted when many witnesses are present so more witnesses can actually mean less helping.

This is called the social impact theory. Darley and Latanane (1968) conducted a study into the number of bystanders and how they affect helping. Subjects were supposed to be discussing social problems with other participants over an intercom system heard what they believed to be one of the group having a seizure. He was trying to explain that he had seizures in times of stress. They measured who helped within four minutes.

When the subjects believed that there were two in the group 85% tried to help, when there were 3 in the group 62% tried to help and when there were 5 other people in the group only 31% intervened. They concluded that the participants had a conflict between a fear of making fools of themselves and ruining the experiment by over reacting and their own guilt and shame at doing nothing. In Latanane and Darleys experiment the other peoples behaviour could not be observed and said that someone must have intervened. Latanane and Darleys experiment showed dissolution rather than diffusion of responsibility. This study is therefore not useful for showing the effects of diffusion of responsibility. Milgram (1970) also proposed a theory called the stimulus overload theory.

This suggested that people in cities are so used to emergency situations that they treat them as normal everyday ones. These situations occur more often so people dont help. People from smaller towns however do not see this emergencies so often so are more likely to help as it attracts more attention. This is supported by Gelfand et al. (1973). People from larger towns and cities are less likely to help because it interferes with peoples privacy which is more difficult to find in cities (Milgram, 1973).

The proximity of the bystanders is said to have an adverse effect on peoples potential helpfulness. The Social Impact theory by Latanane (1981) also says that as the remoteness between the bystander and the victim increases then the less responsible the bystander feels. e. g., someone asking for donations on the telephone is less likely to get any than someone asking in the street face-to-face. Piliavin (1969) showed that people were just as likely to help on a crowded subway as an un-crowded one showing that people found it harder to refuse help in a face-to-face situation such as an enclosed subway. Latanane and Darley created a cognitive 5 stage model of helping behaviour to show how people decide whether to help in a situation or not. If the bystander answers no to any question then no help will be given. The model starts off with whether the bystander notices the event, if so is it an emergency, they then have to assume responsibility and decide that they know what to do.

If they get this far then the have to implement their decision and help the person in need. They have several reasons why people decide no: . Diffusion of responsibility the responsibility for helping is being shared with other people around... Pluralistic ignorance other people not responding makes us think that the situation is not an emergency...

Perceived competence whether you think you can deal with the situation. Piliavin et al. (1969) conducted a study called the Good Samaritan study. This was to investigate the effects on the speed and amount of help given of the type of victim, the race of the victim, the presence of helping models and the size of the group witnessing. The experimenters used victims who were black and white and all ages, they were instructed to collapse after 70 seconds and remain on the floor until they were helped. A model was instructed to help after 70 seconds if nobody else did.

Over 93% helped before the model arrived, 60% involved more than one helper. No diffusion of responsibility occurred with increased group sizes. A victim appearing ill received more help than someone who appeared drunk. 100% helped the person with the cane and 81% helped the drunken victim, help was also offered more quickly for the cane victim.

It was found that men were more likely to help than women were. The longer the emergency went on without any help being offered the less impact the model had and the more bystanders were likely to leave the area. The findings dont support Latanane and Darleys study because there was diffusion of responsibility with increased group size with Latanane and Darley but not with Piliavin. In emergencies people look to other to see how to act.

The nature of the helper and the nature of the victim are shown to also have an effect on whether we help or not. Mood, sex, personality and the physical state of the helper can influence a persons decision. If people are particularly caring and have a natural tendency to help then they will do so. Whether the helper feels self-conscious will affect whether they help and what their personal feelings and views are.

If the person is a strong racist or is very against people drinking then they are less likely to help them. Is en (1984) said that people dont help others when they are in a good mood because they dont want to spoil the good mood they are in. Likewise, someone in a bad mood might help alleviate the bad feeling, especially due to guilt, by helping someone. This is described as the negative state relief hypothesis.

Piliavin et al. (1969) said that men are more likely to help than women and Bickman (1974) found that women were less likely to give money to a stranger and other studies have found that females are reluctant to help. McGovern (1976) said that people who fear embarrassment are less likely to help. Bier hoff et al.

(1991) drew up a table of personality traits of people who would help and who were less likely to help. Psychologists have been unsuccessful in pinpointing a certain personality type most likely to give help. Steels and Southwick (1985) showed that people who had consumed more alcohol were more likely to help others because the alcohol reduces inhibitions and the awareness of potential dangers. The nature of the victim influences the helpfulness of the bystander too. Deserving ness of help, the seriousness of the situation, the victims physical appearance, their race, how similar they are to the helper and their general appearance are all influential factors. Piliavin et al.

(1969) conducted a study in a railway carriage in which a stooge collapsed, sometimes carrying a cane and other times with a brown paper bag and a jacket smelling of alcohol. The victim with the cane received more help (90% within 70 seconds) than the victim with the bag (20%). Another experiment by Piliavin (1972) did an experiment where someone collapsed and bit a capsule of red dye to resemble blood. The amount of help was reduced to 60% and people sought the help of others who they saw as being more able to cope with the situation. They also studied the effects of the victim having a birthmark on their face.

Helping dropped from 86% when the victim was disfigured to 61% when they were. West et al. (1975) found a black person who had broken down in a car received help from 97% of people who were black. When the victim was white, they received help from white people. Piliavin (1969) found that there was a slight racial bias if the victim was drunk. WE are more likely to help people who we see as being similar to ourselves, accounting for the racial bias that has been found.

People who are dressed smartly are more likely to receive help than someone who is untidy (Bickman, 1974). Victims are more likely to be helped if they are seen as deserving causes rather than the cause of their own misfortune, like the drunken people in Piliavins study. The causal schemata theory proposed by Kelly (1973), is when we make attributions about a situation using our previous schema, we take the obvious explanation or situation without considering other causes. We use stored information that has come from our schemas to make sense of a situation. We seem to use the discounting principle meaning that we discount all other possible causes in favour of the one most familiar to us. Fiske and Taylor (1991) said that we use a causal shorthand to explain behaviour, our own or other peoples, quickly.

As Piliavin said we are more likely to help people who are seen as deserving. This causal schemata theory links to this because if we know someone who has been in the same situation or we have then we will remember this and help them because we know how they feel. If we see someone in trouble then we use our past experiences (stored in schema) to decide whether to help them, if we have been in the same or similar situation then we will have the relevant schema. Piliavin et al. (1981) proposed the Arousal: Cost-Reward model to explain how people in social situations weigh up the costs and benefits of behaving in a particular way. It suggests that people work through three stages when they come across a person in need: 1.

Physiological arousal when seeing someone in need we experience certain physiological responses e.g. increased heart rate, sweating. 2. Labelling the arousal physiological arousal can lead to someone labelling it as distress or empathy but Piliavin believed that empathy was a more likely response. 3. Evaluating the consequences we weigh up the costs and benefits of helping people or not. The model emphasises the interaction between two sets of factors: situation, bystander and victim characteristics and cognitive and affective reactions.

Situational characteristics are things like the victim asking for help or not. Bystander characteristics include trait factors (e.g. whether the person is empathic or not) and state factors (e.g. whether the potential helper is in a good mood or not). Victim characteristics include such as the victims appearance and race. Whether helping occurs depends on how the potential helper interprets their arousal. If the arousal is associated with the victims distress then helping is more likely to occur because the distress in unpleasant (Batson and Coke, 1981).

The way in which the distress is relieved depends on the rewards involved in helping and not helping. Piliavin is suggesting that people weigh up the costs and benefits of helping and not helping and this hedonic calculus determines whether they help or not. Rewards from helping can be enhanced self-esteem or even financial reward. Rewards for not helping can be free time and the ability to carry on normally (Darley and Batson, 1973). The costs of helping someone can be the loss of time, effort, physical danger, embarrassment and disruption of normal everyday activity. The costs of not helping can be guilt, disapproval from others and discomfort (both cognitive and emotional) associated with knowing that another person is suffering.

When the costs of helping and the costs of not helping are both low then the likelihood of someone helping is quite high but the bystanders personal differences, expectations and norms will influence their final decision. Piliavins model tries to accommodate much of the previous research on the situational influences and helper. The model is therefore quite useful to bring all the research together but doesnt take into account some influences such as the helpers state of mind. It does draw all the previous research together so accounts for most factors. The causal schemata theory by Kelly only takes into account the past experience of the helper and doesnt allow for the possible ambiguity of the situation or the mood of the helper. Although past experiences are important in influencing our behaviour they arent the only thing that does as this theory suggests. b) Assess the effects of cultural difference on such behaviour.

In some cultures, collectivist ones for example, people are more likely to seek help than those from more individualistic cultures like a large city according to Nadler (1986). People from collectivist cultures like the Soviet Union are more likely to seek help from those they are close to and wont look for help outside their own small circle of family and friends. People are therefore willing to help in these cultures but the help wont always be accepted if it is not from someone within the same society. Therefore helping behaviour is less likely to occur in individualist cultures. The problems with labelling societies as individualist and collectivist are what is collectivist and what is individualist What is classed as a society And if the culture is collectivist then how do you study the behaviour because the researcher wouldnt be part of the culture. Feldman (1968) found that foreigners in Greece asking a favour were more likely to receive help than if they were locals.

This shows that, as Collett and O Shea (1976) found foreigners are seen as more important and worthy of help than the locals are. Helping behaviour is more likely to occur in these places when the people being offered help are foreigners. This shows that people see outsiders as more worthy of help than the local people. This contrasts with Nadler's findings who said that help was only offered to people from within the same culture. Gender also has an effect on whether people ask for and receive help or not. Moghaddam (1998) found twice the number of women than men in the US and Britain seek help for depression.

Weissman et al. (1991) discovered that male alcoholics outnumbered female alcoholics. In different cultures women and men are treated differently, there are certain expectations on both men and women that vary from culture to culture. In Western society men are expected to be tough and independent whereas women are expected to be in need therefore preventing men from seeking help as much as women. This supports Piliavin who said that men were more likely to help than women because if women are seen as in need and men are tough then women arent seen as being able to help and men should be seen to be helping to fulfil this stereotype. In India, according to Miler and Bers hoff (1998) the Indians were just as likely to help someone they didnt like as someone they did like compared to the Americans who were less likely to help someone they didnt like.

In collectivist cultures everybody lives together to survive and support each other. In individualist cultures e.g. a large city everybody goes about their own business and gets on with their own lives. They are, therefore, less likely to ask for or receive help because it is seen as interfering and infringing on a persons privacy especially as it is hard to find in a large city (Milgram, 1977). The findings of the laboratory and field studies on helping behaviour are conflicting. Laboratory studies especially those done with Americans, show that people will go out of their way to avoid seeking help from others. Field studies, on the other hand, show that people, especially Asians, will go out of their way to seek help.

This is not down to cultural differences alone. People in a laboratory situation will interpret the situation differently to people in a natural setting. The natural setting will reduce demand characteristics and has more ecological validity therefore this will be reflected in the findings. In the real world people actively seek out the help of others to extend their social relationships (Moghaddam, 1998) Different cultures expect different things and people within these cultures are brought up with different values that comply to the norm of that particular culture e.g. females are in need and males are tough and independent. In other cultures, women are expected to work for a living e.g. Israel but in more European cultures, women are expected to stay at home and look after the children.

The expectations of a particular culture will influence whether a person helps another or not and whether they seek help. The persons personality, both the potential helper and the victim will also influence the helping behaviour and the extent of the helping behaviour.