Pilliavin et al. (1969) - Subway Samaritan

What was the aim?

To investigate the effect of the following variables on helping behavior:

• Type of victim (ill/drunk)

• Race of victim (black/white)

• The group size

• If people were more likely to help when others offered first

What was the experiment type and experimental design?

Field experiment, independent measures

What was the IV?

• type of victim

• race of victim

• effect of group size (varied naturally)

• modal conditions (early/late and critical/adjacent)

What was the DV?

• time taken to help the victim

• total number of helpful passengers

• gender, race, and location of every helper

• spontaneous comments made by passengers

What was the procedure?

Victims (ill/drunk) were to collapse after 70 seconds and model helper helped 150/70 seconds after from critical/adjacent area.

The experimentors were 16 Columbia general students, females were observers, one male was the model the other was the victim

Who were the participants?

There were over 200 experiments

4450 underground train users - 60% male

45% black, 55% white

What were the results?

• Drunk victim less likely to receive help from opposite race, otherwise race had no effect

• No diffusion of responsibility

• 90% of first helpers were male

• Cane victim helped 95% of the time (mean help time 5 secs)

• Drunk victim helped 50% of the time (mean help time 109 secs)

What conclusions can be made?

The cost of not helping a drunk victim is less as nobody will blame another for not helping because he is perceived as partly responsible for his own situation

Women often help less than men because the cost to them in terms of effort and danger is greater