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Piliavin I. M., Rodin, J., & Piliavin, J. A. (1969). Good samaritanism: an underground phenomenon?.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(4), 289.
In the Piliavin (1969) Subway Study, researchers investigated the influence of bystander intervention by staging a series of situations involving a person in need of help on a subway train, demonstrating the role of various factors like race and urgency in determining the likelihood of bystander assistance.
Aim
This study was designed to investigate how a group of people would react if they saw a person who collapsed on a train.
Specifically, they wanted to investigate the following:
Procedure
This study was a field experiment on a 7 ½ minute non-stop journey on a New York underground train, using various coaches along the train. Participants were passengers who were on board.
Using teams of 4 university students (male victim, male model, 2 female observers), a situation was created on the train to see how passengers would react.
Participants
The victims were: males aged 26 -35; three white, one black; identically dressed in a US army-style jacket, old trousers, and no tie.
The ‘drunk’ smelled of alcohol and carried a spirits bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag (38 trials). The ‘ill ‘victim appeared sober and carried a black cane (65 trials).
Independent VariablesType of victim(drunk or appearing ill and would hold a walking cane).Race of victim(black or white).Effect of the model(a researcher in disguise): stood near the victim and helped after about 70 seconds (critical area – early), stood in the same place but helped after 150 seconds (critical area – late), or stood further away and helped quickly or slowly (‘adjacent – early’ and ‘adjacent – late’), or no model at all. The trials were determined randomly.Size of the witnessing group(a naturally occurring independent variable). The sample consisted of the 4450 American passengers using that particular train, 45% of which were black and 55% white.
Independent Variables
Dependent Variables
There were 6-8 trials per day, on journeys in alternating directions, all the same victim type on any day.
Findings
Conclusion
One of the surprising findings in this study was that there was no diffusion of responsibility. The size of the group made no difference in how much help a victim received. Piliavin et al. offered several explanations for this:
Piliavin et al. (1969) put forward the cost–reward arousal model as a major alternative to the decision model and state it represents a ‘fine tuning’ of the earlier model.
In a similar fashion toLatané and Darley’s decision-helping model, it has two stages that occur before we either help or don’t help.
The first stage is physiological arousal. Arousal in response to the need or distress of others is an emotional response and provides the basic motivational construct of the model.
The cost–reward component stage involves evaluating the consequences of helping or not helping. Whether one helps or not depends on the outcome of weighing up both the costs and rewards of helping.
The costs of helping include effort, time, loss of resources, risk of harm, and negative emotional response. The rewards of helping include fame, gratitude from the victim and relatives, and self-satisfaction derived from the act of helping.
The costs of not helping include guilt, disapproval, damaged self-esteem, and also negative emotional responses. It is recognized that costs may be different for different people and may even differ from one occasion to another for the same person.
Critical Evaluation
The data gathered was bothqualitative and quantitative. The quantitative data included the number and type of passengers who helped as well as the time taken to offer assistance.
The quantitative data allowed for comparisons and statistical analysis, and the qualitative data provided some of the thoughts and feelings of the people involved, including perhaps providing explanations for why they did or did not help.
Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure and one aspect of reliability relevant to studies involving observations is how consistent different observers are when recording information on the same event, i.e., inter-rater reliability.
Some people argue that the cost–reward arousal model is overly calculating. We do not weigh up the pros and cons of helping in as much detail as they suggest. Whilst arousal and helping are often only correlated, the model clearly sees the former as causing the latter.
Therefore the emotional component provides the motivation to do something, whilst the cognitive component determines what the most effective response will be.
A strength of thesampleis that it is fairly big and, therefore, would be representative of people who used the subway in NYC; e.g., 4450 participants were estimated to have been involved.
Oneethical issueis the lack of informed consent within this study – participants were not aware that they were involved in an experiment.
Another ethical issue in Piliavin et al.’s study is that the participants could not be debriefed at the end of the experiment.
Thus, not allowing the participants to know that they were involved in an experiment and that all incidences that occurred on that Subway journey were controlled.
References
Dovidio, J. F., Piliavin, J. A., Gaertner, S. L., Schroeder, D. A., & Clark III, R. D. (1991). The arousal: Cost-reward model and the process of intervention: A review of the evidence.
Piliavin, I. M., Rodin, J., & Piliavin, J. A. (1969).Good samaritanism: an underground phenomenon?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(4), 289.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Julia RusselHead of PsychologyBSc (Hons), PsychologyJulia Russell has over 25 years experience as a Psychology teacher. She is currently Head of Psychology at The Queen’s School, Chester. She is Principal Examiner for two major awarding bodies, visiting tutor at Wrexham Glyndŵr University and an established author.
Julia RusselHead of PsychologyBSc (Hons), Psychology
Julia Russel
Head of Psychology
BSc (Hons), Psychology
Julia Russell has over 25 years experience as a Psychology teacher. She is currently Head of Psychology at The Queen’s School, Chester. She is Principal Examiner for two major awarding bodies, visiting tutor at Wrexham Glyndŵr University and an established author.
