When Do People Help?
Research on altruism has tried to isolate both the personal and the situational factors that influence one person's tendency to help another. Studies have looked at the effect of the helper's mood and personality, various characteristics of the recipients, the type of aid requested, the presence of other people, and so on.
This project involves a field experiment in which you are to collect data on people's responses to an individual in need of help. The stimulus person will be obviously lost and in eed of directions. The extent to which this person makes a direct or an indirect request for aid may determine whether such aid will be forthcoming. Therefore, with half of the subjects, this person will specifically ask for directions (direct request); with the remaining subjects, ,the person will make the need salient but will not specifically ask for help (indirect request). Your data should include the sex of the stimulus person and the sex of the subjects.
Hypothesis
1. Subjects will be more likely to help someone who makes a direct request for aid than someone who makes an indirect request.
2. Subjects will be more likely to help females than males.
3. The sex of the stimulus person and the subjects will have an effect on stimulus-subject interaction. Most helping will occur when male subjects see a female stimulus person; least helping will occur when female subjects see a male stimulus person.
Would you purpose any additional hypotheses? Would you propose alternative hypotheses? State your hypotheses and the reasoning behind them.
Procedure
The best way to handle this project is to work in teams of two. One of you will be the stimulus person; the other will be the experimenter and therefore responsible for making the random assignment of subjects and for observing the subjects' responses (you and your partner should alternate these roles periodically, so that each of you spends an equal amount of time as subject and as experimenter-observer). Choose several areas at the campus or surrounding community where a lot of people are likely to pass by and where (if possible) there are benches on which people often sit.
In this setting, the stimulus person (who will be perusing a map and looking obviously lost) will sit down on a bench near the subject designated by the experimenter. In the indirect-request condition, the stimulus person will search briefly through the map, look around in a bewildered way, and then mumble something like, "Boy, I don't know where that is." The stimulus person will then wait one minute. If help is not forthcoming, he or she will then leave. In the direct-request condition, the stimulus person will go through the same sequence of action, but after the mumbled statement, s/he will turn to the subject and say, "Excuse me. Can you tell me how to get to X?" In either condition, if the subject does offer help, s/he is to be thanked by the stimulus person, who then leaves.
In both conditions, the subjects' responses will be noted on the data sheet by both the stimulus person and the experimenter (who should remain standing inconspicuously nearby). Each subject's response can be coded in one of the several categories: ignores stimulus person, looks at stimulus person but says nothing, says that he or she doesn't know where X is, tells stimulus person where X is, or gives stimulus person some suggestion for finding X. In addition, the subject's facial expression and posture can be rated by both the stimulus person and the experimenter for the degree of friendliness or hostility that was conveyed.
In addition to selecting the subjects, the experimenter will specify what request condition is to be run and will record the data. The request condition can easily be determined by the flip of a coin. Deciding at random who among many passerby is to be the subject is a more difficult task. However, if the experimenter does not use a systematic procedure, s/he runs the risk of biasing the sample in some way (e.g., by picking only friendly-looking people as subjects). In such a field situation, it is often best to develop a "sort of random" procedure for selecting subjects. For example, the experimenter might choose an arbitrary starting point (the edge of a plaza, a row of benches) and then use a random numbers table to determine who will be the subject. If the random number 5 were to appear, it would mean that the fifth person who crossed the edge of the plaza (after the experimenter had starting counting) or the fifth person sitting along the row of benches would be the subject. If unforeseen circumstances make it impossible for you to use the chose subject (e.g., the subject gets up from the bench and leaves just as the stimulus person sits down), you and your partner should wait awhile, then leave, and return a little later to do another trial. After successfully testing a subject, you and your partner should also leave the setting for a period of time before going back to test another subject. If you do not leave, the stimulus person's behavior will look suspicious. If you have chosen several possible locations for your study, you can move from one to another after running each trial.
Data Sheet
X X X Response Expression
Subjects Sex of Stimulus Sex of Subject Condition (Dr/Ir) Ignore Looks No Information Helps Hostile (1) to Friendly (7)
Analysis
Look at the pattern of your own findings and then compare it with those of the other teams in the class.
1. Did your data support or refute the hypotheses? Explain.
2. Did your results suggest alternative hypotheses? If so, what are they?
3. Were there any confounding variables or other problems that might account for your findings? For example, might your prior knowledge of the hypotheses and the experimental condition (or your partner's prior knowledge) have affects your results?
Discuss
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