Diffusion of responsibility
John Darley and Bibb Latane were interested in the Kitty Genovese case and in the whole issue of bystander intervention. They wondered why not one out of the numerous witnesses helped her. They argued that a victim may be in more fortunate position when there is just one bystander rather than several. In such a situation, responsibility for helping the victim falls firmly on to one person rather than being spread among many; in other words, the bystander has a sense of personal responsibility. If there are many observers of a crime, there is a diffusion of responsibility. Each person bears only small portion of the guilt for not helping, and so there is less feeling of personal responsibility.
One of the key norms in many societies is the norm of social responsibility: we should help those who need help. Darley and Latane argued that the norm of social responsibility is strongly activated when only one person observes the fate of a victim, However, it is much less likely to influence behaviour when several bystanders are present.
Darley and Latane tested their ideas in a series of studies. Participants were placed in separate rooms, and told to put on headphones. They were to discuss their personal problems, speaking into a microphone and hearing the contributions of others to the discussion over the headphones. They were led to think that there were one, two, three, or six people m the discussion. In fact, all of the apparent "contributions" of other participants were tape-recordings.
Each participant heard that one of the other people in the discussion was prone to seizures, ©specially when studying hard or taking examinations. Later on, they heard him say, "I-er-I-uh-I've got one of these-er-seuzure-er-er-tbings coming on and-and-and I could really-er-use some help so if somebody would-er-er-help-er-er-help-er-uh-uh-uh [choking sounds] ... I'm gonna die-er-er-I'm... gonna die-er-help-er-er seizure-er... [choking sounds, silence].
Of those participants who thought they were the only person to know that someone was having an epileptic fit, 100% left the room and reported the emergency. In contrast, only 62% of participants responded if they thought there were five other bystanders who knew about the epileptic fit. Participants who thought they were the only bystander responded much faster than those who thought there were five bystanders: 50% of them responded within 45 seconds of the onset of the fit, whereas none of those who believed there were five other bystanders did so.
There were two other interesting findings in the work Darley and Latane. First, the participants who believed -they were five other bystanders denied that this had affected the behaviour. Thus, we are not fully aware of the factors influenced our behaviour. Second, they found that the participants w did not report the emergency were by no means apathetic uncaring. Most of them asked the experimenter if the victi! was all right. Many of them had trembling hands and sweatiij palms. Indeed, they seemed more emotionally aroused than f subjects who reported the emergency.
Other studies
Interpreting the situation. In real life, many emergency have an ambiguous quality about them. Not surprisingly, chances of a bystander lending assistance to a victim are much greater if the situation is interpreted as a genuine emergency. This was studied by Leonard Bick-man. Participants heard bookcase apparently falling on another subject, followed bу scream. When someone else interpreted the situation as! emergency, the participant offered help much faster than wh someone else said there was nothing to worry about.
Victim characteristics
Bystanders are influenced by the characteristics of the victim. This was shown by Piliavin. They staged a number of incidents in the New York subway, in which a male victim staggered forwards and collapsed on the floor. He either carried a black cane and seemed sober, or he smelled of alcohol and carried a bottle of alcohol. Bystanders were less likely to help when the victim was drunk than when he was "ill". Drunks are regarded as responsible In their own plight, and it could be unpleasant to help a smelly drunk who may vomit or become abusive.
Perceived similarity
It seems likely that bystanders will be most likely to help victims they perceive as similar to themselves. This is generally true, but there are some exceptions. Guertner and Dovidio used a situation in which white participants heard a victim in the next room apparently being struck by a stack of failing chairs. When it was unclear whether or not there was an emergency (there were no screams from the victim), the white participants helped a white victim faster than a black one. However, when the victim screamed and so it was clear there was an emergency, a black victim was helped as rapidly as a white victim.
How can we explain these findings? Perceived similarity is of importance, as was found in the ambiguous situation. However, the effects of perceived similarity are wiped out by the demands of the situation if it is clear that there really is an emergency.
Knowing how to help
Suppose that a passenger on a plane suddenly collapses, and one of the stewardesses asks for help. It is natural to assume that a doctor will be more likely to offer
his or her services than someone who doesn't have any relevant medical skills. There is plenty of evidence to support this assumption. Huston et al. (1981) studied the characteristics of those who helped out in dangerous emergencies. There was a strong tendency for helpers to have training in relevant skins such as life-saving, first aid or self-defence.
Other activities
Bystanders do not only take account of he emergency itself. They also consider the activity they are involved in when they come upon the emergency. This was studied by Batson. They sent their participants
from one building to another to perform a task. On the way, they went past a male student slumped on the stairs, coughing and groaning. Of those participants who had been told that i was important for them to help the experimenter by performing the task, and that they were to hurry, only 10% stopped to help the student. On the other hand, 80% of the participants stopped to help if they were told that helping the experimenter was nc very important, and that there was no hurry.
Theoretical ideas
Why do we like some people but dislike others? There are several reasons. However, two major factors are the reward and costs involved. People can be rewarding because they provide fun, security, reassurance, and so on. They can be costly because they are demanding, disagreeable, time-consuming, and so on. We like people if the rewards are greater than the cost but we dislike people if the costs are greater than the reward.
According to equity theory, people in relationship consider not only their own rewards and costs, but also those of the other person. In a satisfactory relations there is fairness or equity on both sides in terms of rewards a costs.
There are other, related notions current in social psychology. It is argued that friendship should be based on equality. In other words, two friends should both enjoy about t same rewards and incur about the same costs. There is all what is known as the reciprocity norm. According to this norm, people should help those who have helped them in the past, and they should not harm those who have helped. This norm sometimes expressed as, "Scratch my back, and I'll scrath yours'
The common thread running through equity theory, notice of equality, and the reciprocity norm, is that social interaction are determined by the rewards and costs involved. In similar fashion, it is useful to consider ting rewards and costs involved in helping and not helping when trying topredict whether a bystander will help:
• Costs of helping: physical harm; delay in carrying out other
activities,
• Costs of not helping: ignoring personal responsibility; guilt; criticism from others; ignoring perceived similarity. !
• Rewards of helping: praise from victim; satisfaction from having been useful if relevant skills are possessed.
• Rewards of not helping: able to continue with other activities as normal.
Piliavin made use of ideas about rewards and costs in their arousal I cost-reward model. According to this model, there are five steps that bystanders go through before deciding whether or not to assist a victim:
1. Becoming aware of someone's need for help; this depends on attention.
2. Experiencing arousal.
3. Interpreting cues and labelling one's arousal.
4. Working out the rewards and costs of different actions.
5. Making a decision and acting on it.
This model is consistent with most of the research we have discussed. In addition, the model assumes that bystanders observing an emergency are often very aroused emotionally. According to Piliavin, high arousal can make it difficult for bystanders, to think clearly what to do. As a result, they may simply not work out the rewards and costs of different actions in a systematic way.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of the arousal/cost-reward model?
PLUS
1. it is useful to regard bystander intervention as a decision-making process involving a series of stages.
2. Rewards and costs are very important in determining helping behaviour.
MINUS
The model seems of little relevance to bystanders who immediately and impulsively lend assistance.
Someone with much experience of similar emergencies (e.g. a doctor responding to someone having a heart attack) may respond smoothly and efficiently without becoming aroused
10. Social influence and its forms. Conformity. Kinds of conformity
What we say and the way we behave are influenced by other people. We want to be liked by other people and to fit into society. As a result, we often hide what we really think, and try to behave in ways that will meet with the approval of others. However, the work that has been carried out by social psychologists indicates there is more to social influence. Most of us are much more influenced by other people than we think we are. This is true across a very wide range of situations. Much social influence depends on what are known as group norms. Group norms consist of the rules and expectations about the behaviour of group members. Consider, for example, the norms of a tennis club.
SOCIAL -FACILITATION
If an individual actively interacts with other people, then his or her behaviour will often be influenced by them. Suppose, however, that other people are present, but they do not interact in any way with the individual. Would his or her behaviour be affected by their mere presence? Allport (1924) answered this question. Some participants could see others working at the same task, but they were told not to compete with them or to interact with them. The task performance of these participants was compare to that of other participants working alone. Those who could see others did better on various tasks, including multiplication and crossing out all the vowels in an article. Allport called this the co-action effect.
The effects of others on performance can also be studied in a slightly different way. The focus is on the performance оf participants performing a task in front of an audience, who are watching the participant rather than doing the same task as the participant. The presence of an audience improves performance. This is known as the audience effect, and it was shown by Travis. Participants learned to track a moving metal target, and were then tested alone and in the presence of a handful of spectators who watched quietly. Most of them performed better in front of the audience.
The co-action effect and the audience effect are both examples of what is known as social facilitation. So facilitation is defined as an improvement in an individual’s performance which is found when he or she is performing in the presence of others. When the situation is changed, however we often find social loafing rather than social facilitation. Social loafing is defined as the decrease in individual effort that is often found when people work in groups. For example, Latane et al asked their participants to cheer or to clap as loudly as they could. They did this on their own, or in groups of tw four, or six people. There was a large drop in the loudness individual cheering and clapping as the number of people the group increased.
What determines whether we find social facilitation or social loafing? Social loafing seems to be found mainly when the focus is on the performance of the group rather than on individual members of the group. Williams et al. (1981) asked groups participants to cheer as loudly as possible; some of them w told that their contribution to the cheering would be identifying whereas others were not told this. Those who thought their individual efforts were being measured did not show social loafing, whereas the other participants did.
Motivation and arousal
As you might imagine, task performance is not always improved by the mere presence of others or by an audience. For example, an actor who is overcome by stage fright and totally forgets his lines cannot be said to benefit from the presence of an audience! Zajonc (1966) tried to explain why the presence of others can either improve or worsen performance. According to him, the presence of others increases the participant's level of motivation and arousal. This high level of arousal increases the tendency to produce dominant or well-learned responses, and reduces the production of non-dominant or new responses.
It follows from Zajonc's theory that the presence of others should improve performance on simple tasks (e.g. crossing out vowels), but should make it worse on complex tasks. There is reasonable support for this prediction. Michaels et al. (1982) argued that pool is an easy task for good players but a difficult one for poor players. Having four people watch a game of pool increased the performance of the good players from 71 % good In shots 80%. In contrast, the audience reduced the performance of poor players from 36% good shots to only 25%. The presence of other people has effects over and above Itlrntilied by Zajonc. Other people can be a source of distraction. They can also cause anxiety and embarrassment in the person performing a task, especially if they are people in a position of authority.
CONFORMITY
Conformity can be defined as yielding to group pressures, something that nearly all of us do at least some of the time. Suppose, for example, that you and some of your friends go to see a film. You didn't think the film was much good, but all of your friends thought it was brilliant. You might be tempted to conform by pretending to agree with their verdict on the film rather than being the odd one out. As we will see, conformity to group pressures occurs much more often than most people imagine.
Muzafer Sherif
The first major study of conformity was carried out by Muzafer Sherif in 1936, He made use of what is known a? the autokinetic effect. If we look at a stationary spot of light in a darkened room, very small movements of the eyes make the light seem to move. In his studies, Sherif first of all tested his participants one at a time. Each participant was to say how much the light seemed to move, and in what direction. Then he formed them into groups of three, and again asked each participant to indicate the amount and direction of movement of the light. Participants within a group tended to produce reports that were very close to each other. In ot words, they showed conformity, because their reports w affected by what the other members of the group had to say;
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Sherif’s approach?
PLUS
He proved the existence of group pressures to conform.
MINUS
1. He used a very artificial situation.
2. There was no correct answer in his situation; it would have been much more impressive show that people ignore what they know to be the right answer.
Solomon Asch
Solomon Asch (1951) improved on the work of Sherif. He set up a situation in which about seven people all sat looking at a display. They were given the task of saying out loud which out of three lines was the same length as a given stimulus line. All but one of the participants were "stooges" (they had been told by the experimenter to give the same wrong answer on some trials). The one real participant was the last (or the last but one) to offer his or her opinion on each trial.
What do you think the real participants did when faced with this conflict between what the other members of the group said and what they knew to be the right answer? On average, one-third of the participants conformed all the time, and about three quarters of them conformed at least once. Thus, only about one-quarter totally refused to conform.
When does conformity break down? Asch found that his results were quite different when just one of the stooges gave the right answer, rather than the wrong answer being given by the majority. In those conditions, conformity occurred only about 5% of the time. It is likely that the comforting feeling of not being isolated made it easier for the participants to avoid conforming.
Cultural factors
One of the possible Imitations of Asch's work is that it was carried out in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is often assumed that Americans are more conformist than other people, and it may be that people were more willing to conform in the days before it became fashionable to "do your own thing". Thus, it is possible that the levels of conformity obtained by Asch reflected the particular culture prevailing in the United States at that time.
Perrin and Spencer (1981) carried out two more studies on cultural factors in conformity. In one study, the participants were young men on probation, and the stooges primed to give the wrong answers were probation officers. The level of conformity in this study was about the same as in the Asch studies. In the filer study, the participants and the stooges were both young unemployed men with Afro-Caribbean backgrounds. Once again, conformity levels were comparable to those reported by Asch.
Over the years, the Asch task has been used in several different countries. The findings varied somewhat from country to country. However, reasonable levels of conformity have been found in the great majority of countries. In other words, conformity is found in nearly every culture that has so far been assessed.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of Asch approach?
PLUS
He found surprisingly large conformity effects in an umambiguous situation in which it might be thought there would be little or no conformity.
MINUS
It was not clear why participants conformed: some said that they believe that the group was right, or that they thought the experimenter wanted them conform; however, it is likely that social approval was the main reason.
Asch only looked at conformity in a trivial situation, in which the participants' deeply held beliefs were not called into question.
Moscovicrs social influence theory
Moscovici (1980) argued that Asch had put too muc' emphasis on the notion that the majority in a group have a larg influence on the minority. He argued that it is also possible f: the minority to influence the majority. He drew a distinctie between compliance and conversion. Compliance is involve when a majority influences a minority, and is based on the pow: of the majority. Conversion is how a minority can influence majority. It involves convincing the majority that the minority' views are correct. For conversion to occur, it is very importai for the minority to argue consistently for its point of view.
In one study, Moscovici and Fancheux (1972) tried to show that a minority of two could influence the other members of a group. The members of the group were shown an object coloured blue. When the minority argued consistently that the colour was actually green, they were able to persuade the rest of the group that it was green rather than blue.
Kinds of conformity
Kelman (1958) argued that there are three mai n reasons why someone behaves in a conforming way: compliance; identification; and internalisation. Compliance involves conforming with the majority in spite of not really agreeing with themj^jpeople comply in order to gain social approval or to avoid being rejected by the rest of the group. As the conformity is only superficial,'Compliance stops when there are гщ group pressures to conform.
Identification occurs when someone conforms to the demands of a given role in society. The«eonformity generally i^iends over several different aspects of behaviour. For example, stewards and stewardesses on planes try to be cheerful, polite, and helpful to &e passenger^ at all times regardless of how they may actually be feeling. They behave jn this way because they are conforming to what is expected of them. ,■;
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Internalisation occurs when someone conforms because they are really in agreement with the views of those who are seeking to influence them. For example, the parents of a small girl may believe that it is very important for her to spend a lot of time with other children. If friends ®f theirsSstart sending their daughters to the Brqufflies, they will probably conform to the suggestion that they might also send tteir daughter. Conformity based on internalisation is like pushing on an open door, in the sense that the individual is being persuaded to do something he or she really wants to do. As a result, conformity behaviour based on internalization continues even when there is no external pressure to conform.
Obedience to authority
It is true of nearly all societies that certain people are given power and authority over others. In our society, for example, parents, teachers, and managers are invested with varying degrees of authority. Most of the time, this does not cause any problems. If the doctor tells us to take some tablets three times a day, we accept that he or she is the expert. As a result, we simply do as we are told without thinking any more about it. However, an issue that has been of interest to psychologists for many years is to work out how far most people are willing to go in their obedience to authority. VtfYrat happens if ^/ou are asked by a person in authority to do something that you think is wrong? Tne'oe^iaiumiTcs^fi^1?! OT^isAS,sjtftwa&carried out by Stanley MilgramYl974).
Stanley Milgram
In Milgram's studies at Yale University, pairs of participants were given the roles of a teacher and a learner for a simple learning test. The "teacher" was asked to give electric shocks to the "learner" every time the wrong answer was given, and to increase the shock intensity each time. At 180 volts, the learner yelled "1 can't stand the pain", and by 270 volts the response had become an agonised scream. If the teacher was unwilling to give the shocks, the experimenter urged him or her to continue.
Do you think you would be willing to give the maximum (and potentially deadly) 450-volt shock in this study? Milgram found that everyone he asked denied that they personally would do any such thing, and psychiatrists predicted that only one person in a thousand would go on to the 450-volt stage. In fact, about 50% of Milgram\s participants gave the maximum shock—which is 500 times as many people as the expert psychiatrists had predicted!
One of the most striking cases of total obedience was that of Pasqual Gino, a 43-year-old water inspector of Italian descent. Towards the end of the experiment, he found himself thinking, "Good God, he's dead. Well, here we go, we'll finish him. And I just continued all the way through to 450 volts
Milgram found that there were two main ways in which -obedience to authority could be reduced: (1) increasing the obviousness of the learner's plight; or (2) reducing the authority or irnfluence of the experimenter. The first way was studied by comparing obedience in four situations (the percentage of participants who were totally obedient is given in brackets):
• Remote feedback: the victim could not be heard or seen (66%).
• Voice feedback: the victim could be heard but not seen (62%).
• Proximity: the victim was only one metre away from the| participant (40%)
• Touch-proximity: this was like the proximity condition, I except that the participant had to force the learner's hand onto] the shockplate (30%).
Milgram reduced the authority of the experimenter by carrying out the experiment in a run-down office building rathe* than at YaieUniversity. He found that the percentage of obedient participants went down from 65% at Yale University to 48% щ teTMr-'town oilice Wlding. The influence of the experimente was reduced by having him give his orders by telephone rathe than having him sitting a few feet away from the participant This reduced obedience from 65% to 20.5%.