By Dr. Julia Russel, published Sept 17, 2020
Piliavin I. M., Rodin, J., & Piliavin, J. A. (1969). Good samaritanism: an underground phenomenon?. Journal of personality and social psychology, 13(4), 289.
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:
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 to it.
A ‘victim’ staged an ‘emergency’ by collapsing (in the designated the ‘critical area’).
After collapsing the victim lay on his back on the floor. If not helped earlier in the journey by a participant or model, the model assisted the victim at the end of the journey.
Participants’ reactions were then watched by covert observers.
The victims were: males aged 26 -35; three white, one black; identically dressed in a US army - style jacket, old trousers, no tie. The ‘drunk’ smelled of alcohol, carried a spirits bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag (38 trials). The ‘ill ‘victim appeared sober and carried a black cane (65 trials).
The models were males aged 24 - 29, wore casual but not identical clothes, and helped by raising the victim to a sitting position and staying with him.
The dependent variables were covertly recorded (from behind newspapers) by two female observers seated in the adjacent area (during 103 victim trials):
There were 6-8 trials per day, on journeys in alternating directions, all the same victim type in any day.
One of the surprising findings in this study was that there was no diffusion of responsibility. The size of the group made no difference to 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 to Latané 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.
When we see someone in distress, we become physiologically aroused. The greater the arousal in emergencies, the more likely it is that a bystander will help, since they wish to reduce it.
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 recognised that costs may be different for different people and may even differ from one occasion to another for the same person.
Helping is more likely: with ill than drunk victims; to be offered by males (as perceived costs are higher and social role reduces self -blame); and with same -race victims if they appear drunk (as perceived risk is higher, social role reduces self -blame and there may be same -race empathy and trust).
The longer an emergency continues: the less important the role of a model (because arousal has been reduced by other means) and the more likely people are to leave the area.
The data gathered was both qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative data included the number and type of passengers who helped as well as the time taken to offer assistance. The qualitative data came from the spontaneous comments made by the passengers. Both types of data are valuable in building up a full picture of what happened and why. 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. The reliability of this study was increased by the fact that there were two independent researchers observing and recording data. Hence they were able to measure 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.
According to Dovidio et al. (1991), evidence indicates that emotional reactions to other people’s distress play an important role in motivating helping. The model proposes that bystanders will choose the response that most rapidly and completely reduces the arousal, incurring as few costs as possible.
Therefore the emotional component provides the motivation to do something, whilst the cognitive component determines what the most effective response will be. Piliavin et al.’s original model was subsequently elaborated to take account of the role played by other factors.
Many of the variables interact, and contribute to how aroused the bystander is and the perceived costs and rewards for direct intervention.
A strength of the sample is 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.
One ethical issue is 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.
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.
Russel, J. (2020, Sept 17). Piliavin et al. (1969) subway study. Simply Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/piliavin.html
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