psyc 104

Describe Asch’s conformity experiments and the main findings. Do people actually

change their perceptions in response to conformity pressure, or just their self-reports?

The Setup: Solomon Asch placed one real participant among several confederates. The task was simple: match a target line to one of three comparison lines. Confederates were instructed to unanimously give obviously wrong answers on critical trials.

Main Findings:

• On critical trials, ~75% of participants conformed at least once

• The overall conformity rate was about 37% of responses (participants gave the wrong answer 37% of the time)

• Only ~25% of participants never conformed at all

Do people actually change their perceptions, or just their self-reports?

This is a crucial distinction. Asch's original results were ambiguous, but subsequent research (including neuroimaging studies by Berns et al., 2005) suggests the answer is nuanced:

• Most conformity is normative — people know the right answer but go along publicly to avoid social rejection or ridicule (changing self-reports, not perception)

• However, some conformity is informational — genuine perceptual/belief change does occur in ambiguous situations

• Berns et al. found that conformity activated regions of the brain involved in spatial perception (not just social/emotional processing), suggesting that social pressure can genuinely alter perception, not merely self-reports

• When the task is unambiguous (as in Asch's line task), most conformity is normative. When the situation is ambiguous, genuine informational influence is more likely

How big does the majority group need to be to maximize people’s tendency to conform?

Asch systematically varied majority size:

Majority Size	Conformity Rate
1 confederate	Very low
2 confederates	Moderate increase
3 confederates	Near-maximum conformity
4+ confederates	No significant increase

The key finding: Conformity rises steeply from 1→3 opponents, then plateaus at around 3. A majority of 3 is sufficient to produce maximum conformity pressure. Adding more people beyond 3 does not meaningfully increase conformity (and very large majorities can sometimes arouse suspicion).

Know how the confidentiality of your responses, the presence of an allies

Confidentiality (private vs. public responses):

• When participants could write their answers privately (rather than stating them aloud in front of the group), conformity dropped dramatically

• This strongly supports the normative interpretation — people conform largely to manage their social image, not because they are genuinely deceived

• Private responding removes the social cost of dissent, freeing people to report what they actually perceive

Presence of an Ally:

• When even one confederate broke from the majority and gave the correct answer, conformity dropped by about 75% (from ~37% to around 5–9%)

• The ally does not have to be competent or even correct — just breaking unanimity is enough

• This suggests that unanimity is the critical ingredient in conformity pressure, not sheer numbers

• Having a single supporter gives the participant "social cover" to dissent without feeling alone

How did the results of the conformity experiment differ when the majority consists of

people from your ingroup rather than from your outgroup?

Research extending Asch's paradigm (e.g., work by Abrams, Wetherell, Cochrane, Hogg & Turner) found:

• Ingroup majorities produce more conformity than outgroup majorities

• Ingroup majority: about 50% error rate.

• Outgroup majority: about 15% error rate.

• When the people pressuring you are members of your own social group (same university, same nationality, shared identity), you are more influenced because they are more relevant reference points — their judgment matters more to your self-concept

• Outgroup majorities are more easily dismissed; their divergent views may even produce contrast effects (making you hold your original position more firmly — a form of reactance)

• This fits with Social Identity Theory: we use ingroup members to define appropriate attitudes and behaviors; outgroup members are simply less informative about what "people like us" should think

What are the costs of dissent in the conformity experiments, and how do these costs

influence how minority decision-makers behave when making public versus private

choices?

Costs of dissent in Asch's paradigm:

• Social embarrassment and ridicule (confederates sometimes laughed or expressed disbelief at dissenters)

• Being perceived as incompetent or odd

• Social exclusion and interpersonal friction

• Participants reported significant discomfort when dissenting

How these costs shape minority decision-makers:

• Public choices: Minority members bear the full social cost — they are visible dissenters. Conformity is high. Even if they privately believe the majority is wrong, the cost of public dissent (embarrassment, conflict, reputational risk) often leads them to go along

• Private choices: With anonymity, the social costs vanish. Minority members are far more likely to express their true views

• This dynamic has real-world implications: minority voices in organizations, juries, and committees are systematically suppressed in public settings but may express different views privately

• Preference falsification (Kuran) — people publicly misrepresent their true preferences when the cost of honest expression is high, which can lead to cascades of false consensus

What is the canonical finding of Milgram’s obedience to authority experiment, and how

does this finding diverge from what psychiatrists and students hypothesized would

happen?

The Setup: A participant ("teacher") administered electric shocks of increasing intensity (15V–450V in 15V increments) to a "learner" (confederate) for wrong answers. The experimenter wore a lab coat and used standardized prompts ("Please continue," "The experiment requires that you continue," etc.). The learner was heard (but not seen) crying out in pain, demanding to stop, and eventually going silent.

The Canonical Finding:

• 65% of participants administered the maximum 450-volt shock (labeled "XXX — Danger: Severe Shock")

• Virtually all participants continued to at least 300 volts

• This was true even though the learner screamed, complained of a heart condition, and eventually went silent

What Psychiatrists and Students Predicted:

• Psychiatrists predicted that fewer than 1% of participants would go to the maximum

• Students and laypeople similarly predicted very low rates (typically predicting they themselves would stop at around 135V)

• The actual results were vastly higher — a stunning divergence that illustrates our tendency to underestimate situational power and overestimate individual dispositional resistance (the Fundamental Attribution Error)

In Jerry Burger’s replication attempt of the Milgram experiments, what was the modeled

refusal condition? How did the levels of obedience in the modeled refusal condition

differ from the base condition and from Milgram’s original results?

Jerry Burger's 2009 replication updated Milgram's procedure for modern ethics standards by stopping at 150V (the first point at which the learner demands to be released — and the point at which most eventual completers and refusers diverge).

The Modeled Refusal Condition:

• A second "teacher" (a confederate) was present who refused to continue at 90V, saying he wasn't comfortable going on

• The real participant then took over as the sole teacher

• The model's refusal provided a behavioral example that dissent was possible

Results:

• Base condition: About 70% of participants continued past 150V

• Modeled refusal condition: About 47% continued past 150V — a significant reduction

• Compared to Milgram's original: ~65% went all the way to 450V; Burger's ~70% at the 150V threshold is roughly consistent with extrapolating Milgram's results (since nearly all who passed 150V in Milgram's study went to 450V)

• Key takeaway: Simply witnessing someone else refuse dramatically reduces obedience — mirroring the ally effect in conformity studies

How do men and women differ in their responses to Milgram’s experiments? What about

people who thought they had personal responsibility, or people who asked about the

learner’s well-being?

Gender:

• Men and women showed very similar rates of obedience in Milgram's studies

• Milgram did test women (in some conditions) and found essentially the same ~65% completion rate

• However, women reported experiencing more distress during the procedure

• Gender was not a significant moderator of obedience

Personal Responsibility:

• When participants were told they bore personal responsibility for the learner's welfare, obedience decreased

• Diffusion of responsibility (being able to attribute outcomes to the experimenter or the situation) facilitated continued obedience

• When the experimenter accepted responsibility explicitly, participants were more likely to continue

Concern for the Learner's Well-being:

• Participants who asked about the learner's health or well-being were actually more likely to eventually disobey — expressing concern was a behavioral marker of moral engagement

• Conversely, participants who stayed task-focused and did not inquire about the learner were more likely to comply fully

How does identification with the goals of the experimenter/learner affect obedience?

Identification with the Experimenter:

• When participants identified with the goals of the experimenter (advancing science, understanding learning) or with the authority of the institution (Yale University), obedience was higher

• When the experiment was moved to a run-down office building (removing Yale's prestige), obedience dropped to about 48%

• Wearing a lab coat signals legitimate scientific authority — its presence increased compliance

Identification with the Learner:

• When participants were told the learner was similar to them, or when they could see the learner (proximity conditions), obedience decreased

• In the touch-proximity condition (participant had to physically press the learner's hand onto a shock plate), obedience dropped to about 30%

• Greater psychological identification and empathy with the victim undermined the authority relationship

• This parallels the empathy-altruism literature: feeling connected to someone's suffering activates helping/protective motivations that compete with obedience

Know about your risks of encountering violence in San Diego, the United States, and

globally? How do these rates compare to historic rates of violence?

Current rates (approximate, as of recent years):

• San Diego has a relatively low violent crime rate compared to national averages — generally considered one of the safer large U.S. cities

• United States: The U.S. has higher rates of violence than most other wealthy nations, particularly for homicide (roughly 5–6 per 100,000 per year), driven substantially by gun violence

• Globally: Violence rates vary enormously — some Central American countries and conflict zones have homicide rates exceeding 50–100 per 100,000; Western Europe's rates are typically 1–2 per 100,000

• Absolute Risk (San Diego):

  • Homicide: ~4/100,000

  • Any violent crime: 367/100,000

Historical Comparison (Steven Pinker's "Better Angels" thesis):

• By virtually every measure, violence has declined dramatically over human history

• Pre-state societies had estimated violent death rates of 10–60% of all deaths

• Medieval Europe had homicide rates many times higher than today

• The 20th century, despite its wars, was proportionally less deadly than earlier eras when adjusted for population

• Interpersonal violence (assault, homicide) has fallen steeply in the U.S. since the early 1990s peak

• We systematically overestimate our current risk due to media availability bias — news coverage of violence is pervasive even as rates decline

Professor McCullough used a model of aggression that includes cues, internal states,

cognitive control, and learned and unlearned aggressive behaviors to organize his lectures

on aggression. Be prepared to describe some of the model’s basic features and how it can

organize some of what we know about aggression in both humans and sparrows.

Core Components:

1. Cues — Environmental stimuli that trigger aggressive associations

   • Weapons (see weapons effect below)

   • Provocations (insults, physical pain, heat)

   • Social cues (rival signals in sparrows; disrespect in humans)

2. Internal States — Physiological and psychological conditions that modulate aggression

   • Frustration (Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis)

   • Negative affect, pain, heat, stress

   • Hormonal states (testosterone)

   • In sparrows: testosterone levels during breeding season dramatically increase territorial aggression

3. Cognitive Control — Higher-order processes that regulate whether aggressive impulses are expressed

   • Prefrontal cortex function

   • Rumination vs. distraction

   • Alcohol reduces cognitive control, increasing aggression

   • Humans have far more cognitive control over aggression than most species

4. Learned Aggressive Behaviors — Culturally and individually learned scripts for aggression

   • Culture of honor (Southern U.S. males)

   • Gang norms

   • Modeled aggression (Bandura's Bobo doll experiments)

5. Unlearned Aggressive Behaviors — Species-typical patterns

   • Threat displays in sparrows (white/black plumage signaling)

   • Reflexive aggression in response to pain

What is the weapons effect? Do weapons increase violence and the accessibility of

cognitive states associated with violence?

Definition: The mere presence of weapons increases aggressive thoughts and behaviors, even when the weapon is irrelevant to the situation.

Original finding (Berkowitz & LePage, 1967):

• Participants who were angered gave more intense shocks when a gun was present in the room (ostensibly left by a previous participant) than when a badminton racket or nothing was present

• The weapon served as an aggression-related cue that primed aggressive cognitions

Do weapons increase violence and accessibility of violence-related cognitive states?

• Yes, on both counts

• Weapons prime aggressive thoughts (measured via reaction times to aggression-related words)

• The effect is stronger when people are already frustrated or provoked

• The weapons effect is one of the most replicated findings in aggression research

• Real-world data: countries and states with higher gun availability consistently show higher rates of gun homicide — not just substitution with other weapons

• However, the effect size for priming is modest; the bigger issue may be weapons enabling more lethal outcomes when aggression does occur

Do violent video games cause aggression?

The Short Answer: Evidence is WEAK

Meta-Analysis Evidence (Mathur & VanderWeele, 2019):

• Effect sizes fall at or below r = .10 (cutoff for a "small" effect)

• Anderson et al. (2010) found the largest effects, but still small

• Ferguson (2015) found near-zero effects when controlled

• Hilgard et al. (2017) found effects essentially at zero

Hilgard et al. (2019) Key Study:

• Played violent vs. non-violent game → wrote essay → got insulted → chance to aggress

• Result: NO EFFECT of violent games on aggression

Bottom Line:

• Short-term priming of aggressive thoughts shown in some labs

• No meaningful link to real-world violence

• Countries with high video game use (Japan, S. Korea) have very LOW violence rates

• Video game popularity rose in 1990s while youth violence declined

• Effect sizes too small to be practically meaningful

Key Concept: Public perception (politicians, media) FAR overstates what the science actually shows

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What is the Dictator Game? What result do researchers most commonly find when people

play it?

What it is:

• One player (the "dictator") is given a sum of money (e.g., $10) and must decide how much, if any, to give to a second player

• The second player has no power — they must accept whatever is offered

• Pure self-interest predicts the dictator gives $0

Most common finding:

• Most dictators give something — typically 20–30% of the endowment

• Modal offers are often around $2–3 out of $10

• A meaningful minority gives exactly half (50%)

• Almost no one gives $0 (pure self-interest), and almost no one gives everything

• This finding violates standard economic rationality and suggests that fairness norms, altruism, or social preferences are operative even in anonymous, one-shot interactions

Explain the four motivations for prosocial behaviors – egoism, altruism, collectivism, and

principlism.

1. Egoism

• Helping others is ultimately motivated by self-benefit

• Could be material (reciprocity), reputational (looking good), or psychological (relieving one's own distress at seeing someone suffer)

• "I help because it makes me feel better / look good / benefits me in the long run"

2. Altruism

• Helping is motivated by genuine concern for the other's welfare as an end in itself

• The helper's benefit (if any) is incidental, not the goal

• Batson's empathy-altruism hypothesis argues this is real (see below)

3. Collectivism

• Helping is motivated by concern for the welfare of a group one belongs to or cares about

• "I help members of my community/group because their flourishing is my goal"

• Group selection arguments and ingroup favoritism fit here

• Different from altruism (which is other-focused) in that the unit of concern is the collective

4. Principlism

• Helping is motivated by adherence to a moral principle (e.g., "I ought to help those in need")

• The person helps to uphold a duty or principle, not purely for the benefit of the recipient or themselves

• Kantian deontological motivation: doing right because it is right

• Different from altruism: the goal is principle-maintenance, not the other's welfare per se

How do different ways of “framing” affect people’s decisions in the dictator game?

How the game is described dramatically affects giving:

• "Community" framing (emphasizing connection, sharing, cooperation) → substantially more generous offers

• "Business/Wall Street" framing → more self-interested, lower offers

• "Taking" frame (dictator can take from the other player's endowment rather than give) → far less giving / more taking than the standard giving frame

• Labeling the other player as a charity, a person in need, or a named individual → increases giving

• Anonymity vs. visibility: When dictators believe they are being observed (even by a picture of eyes), giving increases — consistent with reputational concerns even in nominally anonymous settings

• These framing effects reveal that prosocial behavior is highly context-sensitive and that the "default" cognitive frame we adopt strongly shapes what feels like the appropriate action

Explain the empathy-altruism hypothesis.

Proposed by C. Daniel Batson:

• Core claim: Feeling empathy for another person produces genuinely altruistic motivation — the ultimate goal is the other's welfare, not one's own benefit

• When you empathize with someone (perspective-take, feel their distress), this produces an other-focused motivational state that leads to helping even when it's costly and even when escape is possible

• Contrasts with the egoistic alternative: that we help only to reduce our own distress (negative state relief model) or to gain social/material rewards

Key distinction:

• Empathy → altruistic motivation (other's welfare is the goal)

• Personal distress → egoistic motivation (reducing one's own discomfort is the goal)

• High empathy individuals help even when they could easily escape the situation — the other's suffering remains their concern regardless of whether staying or leaving would reduce their own distress

Explain the rationale and results of Daniel Baston’s experiments that featured

experimental manipulations of empathy and the opportunity to escape from helping.

The Experimental Design:

Batson manipulated two things:

1. Empathy level: Low (told to remain objective) vs. High (told to imagine how the target person feels)

2. Ease of escape: Easy (you won't encounter this person again) vs. Difficult (you will see this person regularly)

The Logic:

• If helping is egoistically motivated (to reduce one's own distress), then:

  • High empathy + easy escape → don't need to help (can just leave and the distress goes away)

• If helping is altruistically motivated (to improve the other's welfare), then:

  • High empathy + easy escape → should still help (because you care about their welfare, not just your discomfort)

Results:

	Easy Escape	Difficult Escape
Low Empathy	Low helping	Higher helping
High Empathy	High helping	High helping

• Low empathy + easy escape: little helping (consistent with both theories)

• Low empathy + difficult escape: more helping (egoistic — helping to avoid awkwardness)

• High empathy + difficult escape: high helping (predicted by both)

• High empathy + easy escape: still high helping — this is the critical cell

  • Egoistic theory predicts these people should NOT help (they can escape)

  • Altruistic theory predicts they WILL help (they care about the other)

  • Batson found they DID help → supports the empathy-altruism hypothesis

What is Peter Singer’s Shallow Pond Argument? Explain the argument and its relevance

to prosocial behavior.

The Argument (from Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality"):

Premise 1: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad.

Premise 2: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, you ought to do it.

Application: If you walked past a shallow pond and saw a small child drowning, you would wade in and save the child — even if it ruined your expensive clothes. The slight cost to you is not morally comparable to the child's death.

Extension: Children are dying of preventable poverty-related causes right now. You could save them by donating money. The geographical and psychological distance between you and them is morally irrelevant — distance doesn't change the moral calculus.

Conclusion: You are morally required to donate to effective charities until giving more would cost you something of comparable moral significance.

Relevance to prosocial behavior:

• Challenges our intuition that proximity and identifiability drive helping obligations

• Reveals that we are subject to the identifiable victim effect — we respond to one named child but not statistics representing millions

• Raises the question of whether our emotional responses (which favor nearby, identifiable victims) are morally reliable guides

• Motivates the effective altruism movement: if we're going to help, we should maximize impact

What does it mean for a charity to be “effective?” What do we mean when we say that

some charities are more effective than others?

Effectiveness in charity means:

1. Impact per dollar: How much good (lives saved, suffering reduced, diseases prevented) does one dollar of donation produce?

2. Counterfactual impact: Would the good have happened anyway without the donation?

3. Scalability: Can the intervention work at larger scale?

4. Evidence base: Is there rigorous evidence (ideally RCTs) that the intervention actually works?

Why some charities are far more effective than others:

• Highly effective (per GiveWell metrics): malaria nets (Against Malaria Foundation), direct cash transfers, vitamin A supplementation, deworming programs

  • Cost per life saved/DALY averted: often $1,000–5,000

• Less effective: many feel-good interventions in wealthy countries, some international aid programs without evidence of impact

  • Cost per life saved can be 100–1,000x higher

• The difference between the best and average charities can mean 100x more impact per dollar

Key insight: Our charitable giving is heavily influenced by emotional resonance, marketing, and identifiability rather than effectiveness — effective altruism argues we should override these intuitions with evidence

What is the Parable of the Good Samaritan and why does it come up in a social

psychology course?

The Parable: A man is beaten and left for dead on the road. A priest and a Levite (respected religious figures of the same group as the victim) both pass by without helping. A Samaritan (a member of a despised outgroup) stops, provides care, and pays for the man's lodging and recovery.

Why it appears in social psychology:

It is the backdrop for Darley and Batson's (1973) Good Samaritan Study (see Q26), which tested seminary students — people whose professional identity involves helping and moral living.

More broadly, it illustrates:

• Ingroup/outgroup effects: We might expect ingroup members (priest, Levite) to help a co-ethnic, but situational factors overwhelmed this

• The gap between moral values and moral behavior: People who believe in helping don't always help

• Situational power: Being in a hurry (a situational factor) powerfully suppressed helping, regardless of the person's values or religious training

Who was Kitty Genovese? Why was her death important to social psychology? What is

true and what is false about how we have come to understand her death?

Who was she? Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old woman murdered outside her apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens, New York, on March 13, 1964.

The story that entered social psychology: The New York Times (and subsequently Martin Gansberg) reported that 38 witnesses watched from their windows for over half an hour as she was stabbed, did nothing, and did not call police — a supposed case of mass indifference.

What this story inspired:

• Darley and Latané's foundational research on bystander intervention and diffusion of responsibility

• The concept of the bystander effect entered both science and popular culture

What is TRUE:

• Genovese was murdered in a brutal attack

• Some neighbors did hear screaming

• The police were not called promptly

What is FALSE or exaggerated:

• 38 witnesses did not watch the entire attack — most heard something but could not see what was happening and misinterpreted the sounds (perhaps a lovers' quarrel)

• The attack occurred in two separate episodes over about 30 minutes; after the first attack, the attacker left, and Genovese managed to reach a doorway — not an uninterrupted half-hour of visible violence

• At least one person did call the police, and a neighbor held her as she died

• The "38 witnesses" figure was essentially fabricated or wildly exaggerated by the Times

• Recent journalism (Jim Rasenberger, A.M. Rosenthal's own revisionism) has substantially corrected the record

Legacy: Despite the factual problems, the case productively stimulated genuine scientific work that revealed real psychological phenomena (diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance)

Understand the Hurdle Model of bystander intervention. What are the psychological

hurdles we must overcome in order to effectively render help?

Latané and Darley proposed a decision tree of psychological hurdles that must all be cleared for helping to occur. Failing any one hurdle means no help is rendered.

The Five Hurdles:

Hurdle 1: Notice the event

• Must first perceive that something is happening

• Distraction, inattention, or being in a hurry can prevent this

• Even obvious emergencies can be missed

Hurdle 2: Interpret it as an emergency

• Must recognize the event as requiring help

• Ambiguity is a major obstacle — is that person drunk, or having a medical emergency?

• Pluralistic ignorance operates here (see Q24)

Hurdle 3: Assume personal responsibility

• Must feel that you are responsible for helping

• Diffusion of responsibility (see Q25) undermines this in crowds

• "Someone else will handle it"

Hurdle 4: Know how to help

• Must feel competent to help

• Lacking first aid knowledge, not knowing who to call, uncertainty about what to do

• Training (CPR certification, etc.) removes this hurdle

Hurdle 5: Decide to implement help

• Must overcome audience inhibition — fear of embarrassment if wrong

• Fear of danger to oneself

• Evaluation apprehension

Key insight: The presence of other bystanders impedes helping at multiple hurdles simultaneously — not just one

What is pluralistic ignorance?

Definition: A situation in which each individual in a group privately holds a belief/interpretation, but incorrectly believes that most others hold a different belief — leading everyone to publicly act inconsistent with their private views.

In bystander contexts:

• When an ambiguous event occurs (e.g., someone collapsed), each bystander is uncertain whether it's a real emergency

• Each person looks at others for information — others appear calm (because they too are looking around and suppressing their concern to appear calm)

• Each concludes: "Other people don't seem worried, so it probably isn't serious"

• Result: everyone privately thinks "maybe this is bad" but publicly behaves as if nothing is wrong — reinforcing everyone else's false sense of calm

Other examples:

• Students in a class who don't understand but don't ask questions because no one else is asking (assuming others understand)

• Drinking norms on college campuses — students privately feel uncomfortable with heavy drinking but assume others are more enthusiastic (Prentice & Miller)

What is diffusion of responsibility?

Definition: As the number of bystanders increases, each individual feels less personally responsible for taking action, because responsibility is perceived as shared across the group.

Mechanism:

• In a crowd, any one person can think "someone else will help" or "surely one of these other people is better positioned to help"

• With only one bystander, there is no one else — full responsibility falls on that person

• With 10 bystanders, each person experiences only 1/10th of the responsibility (roughly)

Darley and Latané's epileptic seizure study:

• Participants believed they were in a group discussion via intercom (actually alone, or with 1 or 5 "others")

• A confederate appeared to have an epileptic seizure

• Results:

  • Alone: 85% helped, quickly

  • 2-person group: 62% helped

  • 6-person group: 31% helped

• Vividly demonstrates diffusion of responsibility

Key point: More bystanders = less help, not more — a counterintuitive finding of great practical importance

What did Darley and Batson discover in their Good Samaritan Study? Under what

conditions were those ministers-in-training most likely to render aid to that unconscious

fellow in the alley?

Setup:

• Princeton seminary students (people training for a religious vocation)

• Were told to go to another building to give a talk — half about the Good Samaritan parable, half about job prospects for seminary graduates (irrelevant topic)

• Experimenters varied time pressure: high hurry ("You're late, go now"), intermediate, or low hurry ("You have time, go when ready")

• On the way, they passed a confederate slumped in an alley, coughing and groaning

Results:

• Topic of the talk: Had essentially no effect on helping — even those who had just been thinking about the Good Samaritan were no more likely to help

• Time pressure was the dominant predictor:

  • Low hurry: 63% helped

  • Intermediate: 45% helped

  • High hurry: only 10% helped

• Some in the high-hurry condition literally stepped over the slumped figure

Lesson:

• Situational factors (time pressure) overwhelmed dispositional factors (being a seminary student, having helping values, having just thought about helping)

• Illustrates the power of the situation over character and intentions

• Also demonstrates that the first hurdle (noticing) may have failed — or that the cost of stopping felt prohibitively high

What did Darley and Latané discover about the effects of other bystanders on people’s

likelihood of intervening in an emergency?

The Smoke-Filled Room Study (Latané & Darley, 1968):

• Participants filled out a questionnaire alone, or with two confederates who ignored emerging smoke

• Alone: 75% reported smoke within 2 minutes

• With two passive confederates: only 10% reported smoke

The Seizure Study (above, Q25):

• Group size systematically reduced helping rates and slowed response times

General conclusion:

• The bystander effect: the more people present, the less likely any individual is to help

• Two mechanisms:

  1. Pluralistic ignorance (at the interpretation stage)

  2. Diffusion of responsibility (at the responsibility stage)

• These work together to create a profound suppression of helping in groups

• Paradoxically, you are more likely to get help if one person witnesses your emergency than if a crowd does

Practical implication: In an emergency, single out a specific person ("You, in the red jacket, call 911") to overcome both effects

Under what circumstances are men more likely to help than women? Under what

circumstances are women more likely to help than men?

When men are more likely to help than women:

• Chivalrous/gallant helping: Situations involving strangers, physical danger, or risk (e.g., helping a stranded motorist, giving directions, helping someone being attacked)

• Situations that are public and heroic — where helping is visible and confers status

• When the person needing help is an attractive woman

• Short-term, one-time helping that requires physical strength or bravery

When women are more likely to help than men:

• Nurturant/caregiving helping: Long-term care, emotional support, tending to the sick or vulnerable

• Volunteering: Women volunteer at higher rates than men overall

• Helping within close relationships (family, friends)

• Situations requiring emotional labor or sustained attention

The broader pattern:

• Gender differences in helping reflect socialized gender roles: men are socialized into heroic/protecting roles; women into nurturing/caregiving roles

• The difference is largely in the type of help, not in overall altruism

• When risk is present in public, men help more; when emotional support is needed in relationships, women help more