Psychology in Practice - Case Study Example

Introduction The behaviour of people in social groups differs for reasons almost as variable as the number of people in the group. There have, however, been some salient similarities found among groups and these have been reported by psychological researchers. Some, like Darley and Baston, have found that a person’s likelihood of attracting the help of another in a situation depends on the amount of time available to the person from whom the help is sought, or in other words, how busy he or she might be (Wetering). Levine has noted that these researchers “eschewed personality accounts of the bystanders’ behaviour in favour of immediate situational factors that might have inhibited helping” (Levine, 2005). Others have mentioned the idea of similarity and relatedness, indicating that a person is more likely to help another based on a genetic appraisal of the situation and the desire to help those of his or her specific gene pool. Another prosocial idea is that persons behave according to the theory of reciprocal altruism, in which persons help others in the expectation of receiving something in return. Persons might also help others when faced with guilt or the need to repay a good deed that was previously done to them. This is known as guilt or reparative altruism (Wetering). On the other hand, situations exist in which persons might not be inclined to help. Situations of moralistic aggression may arise, in which people feel that others are taking advantage of their altruistic tendencies, and in such cases they might not be inclined to help. Such is often the case in larger cities where cheaters are apt to exist. Subtle cheating and mimicry abound, through which people might pretend to be in distress in order to elicit altruistic behaviour. Such situations are likely to cause moralistic aggression to arise in persons as a protective mechanism (Wetering). The social setting also determines the type of behaviour one can expect from a person. According to the Darley and Latané study done in 1968, a person is more likely to help another if he or she is the only available helper in the situation. This theory is akin to others concerning crowds. Areas that are crowded or busy tend to contain people who are less likely to help in a dire situation. This might be due to their being in a hurry or it might hinge on the idea that crowds or busier areas are more likely to contain opportunistic persons. In such cases patterns might also obtain so that despite such variables as cultural or societal norms, in a crowd, the bystander effect occurs as a result of the diffusion of responsibility. Method As an experiment in social behaviour, a group of colleagues conducted a study on altruism outside of a shopping mall. The person used as the stimulus performed the role by asking for directions to a prominent place in the area—the UEL. Subjects were randomly selected and distributed in a random-number table. Possible observed responses to the stimulus were anticipated and headings created for each. The categories included those who ignored the stimulus, those who looked, gave no information, those who helped, and the subjects’ expressions during the experiment. The frequency of different responses was recorded in these tables. Other aspects of the situation that were recorded for future analysis were the conditions of the experiment. This included the dispersal of the crowd at the mall—whether the place was crowded or not. Experiments were performed under both conditions and data separated accordingly. Similar experiments were carried out by members of other teams in a seminar group, and upon completion of these experiments, the results were pooled in a collective table in order to facilitate the analysis of trends and to increase the validity and reliability of the data. Data was correlated with regard to the variables mentioned previously. Results For the team, the experiment produced results such that during a crowded condition (represented by an approximate number of 60 persons) the experimenter-stimulator was completely ignored by 2 persons while 5 persons acknowledged his presence and gesture by looking in his direction. Three persons acknowledged his presence but provided no answer to his question while 7 persons were willing to provide an answer to his question. Five persons gave expressions. In the less crowded condition (represented by an approximate number of 30 people) 3 people ignored the experimenter, while 2 looked in his direction and 6 gave no answer or information. Seven persons gave expressions. The group from whom the experiments’ subjects were drawn consisted mainly of Caucasian (white) persons with a small percentage of Indian and Black persons. An approximate and respective ratio would be about 6:2:2; that is, 60% white, and 20% Indian and Black. Their ages ranged from approximately 12 to 50, though most persons were apparently within the 15-30 age range. The group was predominantly female—approximately 65-70%. A total of four teams from the seminar group participated in similar experiments. The demographics of the groups from which other experimenters in the seminar drew their data were similar to that of this team, but slight deviations were observed based on the location of the experiment. At a movie theatre the male to female ratio became more even, but the predominant age for the population remained in about the 15-30 range. The crowded-condition estimates for the entire seminar groups ranged from 30 to 60 persons in the area, while the estimates of less-crowded conditions ranged from 10 to 40 persons. During the crowded conditions, three out of four teams reported that the experimenter was ignored twice, while one team recorded this occurrence 3 times. The persons who looked at the experimenter during crowded conditions numbered 8 for two teams 5 for one team and an additional 4 for the other group. Those persons who provided no information numbered 3 for three of the teams and 2 for the other team, while those who were helpful amounted to 8 for one team, 5 for another, and 7 for the other two teams. Those who showed expression for each team were numbered at 5 for two teams, 2 for one team and 7 for the other. For the entire seminar group under less-crowded conditions ranging from 10 to 40 persons two teams reported being ignored by only 2 persons, while one team was ignored by 3 and another by 4 persons. For persons who looked at the experimenter, 8 were reported by one team to have done this, while 10 were reported by another team. The other teams that reported that persons looked at the experimenter gave the number of them as 2 and 4 for each. Those who showed expression for each team were numbered at 7 for two teams, 5 for one team and 6 for the other. The experimenter who provided the stimulus for the experiment is YOUR AGE, etc HERE. Crowded-condition estimates for this team was larger overall than that of the other teams. However, similar results were found overall under these conditions. During less-crowded conditions, one team reported that an unusually large number of persons looked at the experimenter. This was the team that considered a less-crowded situation to contain 10 people. In their case, 10 persons observed looked at the experimenter, whereas those who looked at the experimenter for this team were 2, whose concept of a less-crowded condition was one that contained 30 people. Within this team (T3), there appeared to be some tendency toward getting responses from persons who are of a similar ethnicity. Especially for women, gender appeared to have an impact on the likelihood of response. Women tended to be more receptive of other women and sceptical or hesitant to respond to men. Men were likely to respond both to women as well as to other men, if they responded at all. Discussion The results of the study showed that fewer people did offer help when the condition was more crowded. However, the difference between the two was not significantly high. Only one more person responded in the less-crowded situation than in the crowded, and this might be attributable to the fact that this experiment differed from the seizure experiment done by Darley and Latané and the case of Kitty Genovese. The current scenario had one person approaching a specific individual to ask for help, while the two cases mentioned required the help of no one person in particular. In other words, while the Kitty Genovese case and the seizure experiment were public, this experiment occurred as a private interaction between the experimenter and each subject. In the experiments for the entire seminar group there seemed to be an overall trend of higher incidences of help where the crowd was smaller, except in the case of one team where the opposite was true. It is, however, difficult to comment on the reasons for this without the details of that experiment. One thing that can be said is that what some teams considered a crowded area, others considered less crowded. This might be a reason why T4 only accrued 3 helpful responses in its “less-crowded” area while all other groups accrued 8: T4’s idea of a less crowded area was more crowded than all the others’—more crowded than even T2’s idea of a crowded condition. The results of the experiment seemed partly to refute the theory that persons are more likely to respond unfavourably in a crowd because they are in a hurry. It is useful to distinguish between the crowd in a busy area and a more static crowd. This shopping mall might be considered a busy area, as the crowd was a constantly changing one. However, despite the busy-ness of the area, people offered more help and information to the experimenter than in a place that was less crowded. It was, however, quite possible that though less crowded, the people outside the mall were equally or even more busy. That would offer an argument in favour of the Good-Samaritan theory of busy-ness (Levine, 2005). However, the data still seems inconclusive. It was possible to detect that gender and ethnic biases existed in the experiment. Women, on the whole, displayed more moralistic aggression toward male experimenters than they did toward female experimenters. This was also true ethnically, as persons displayed an overall tendency to be accommodating to an experimenter if he or she happened to be of a similar ethnic background. This supports the theory of similarity or relatedness (Wetering). One problem with this experiment was that it was difficult to measure the degree of busy-ness that could be accorded to any given person. It was therefore difficult to say how much more or less likely it is for a person to help another depending on that degree of business. In that case, it was difficult to tell whether a person was busy, moralistically aggressive, apprehensive or apathetic. Despite this, the study did prove meaningful in that it gave some insight into the idea of relatedness. It also shed some light on aspects of the crowded-conditions theory, though much needed to be cleared up regarding the exact meaning of the term “crowded conditions.” It would also be helpful to test the diffusion of responsibility hypothesis with a staged situation in which the experimenter requires general help from no one in particular. However, the fact that several teams conducted similar experiments did increase the validity of the study. References Levine, M. (2005). “Rethinking Bystander Non-lntervention: social categorisation and the evidence of witnesses at the James Bulger murder trial.” Department of Psychology. Lancaster: Lancaster Univ. Vande Wetering, S. “Things to do in pro-social behaviour lecture.” U. College of the Fraser Valley. http://www.ucfv.bc.ca/Psychology/vanderws/360lec7.htm Read More