Piliavin 1969

Piliavin 1969

1. To investigate factors affecting helping behaviour.

   • The race of the helper
   • The frequency of helping
   • The speed of helping
   • The race of the victim (black or white)
   • The type of victim (drunk or ill)
   • The field experiment also investigated the impact of the presence of a model (someone who offers help first), as well as the relationship between the size of the group and frequency of helping.
     • Field experiment using participant observation

2. 4450 men and women travelling on a particular stretch of the New York underground system between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays during the period of April 15th to June 26th, 1968

   • 45% black and 55% white. The average number of people in the train carriage was 43, and the average number of people in the critical area where the incident was staged was 8.5.
   • Two particular trains were selected for the study. The trains were chosen because they did not make any stops between 59th Street and 125th Street. This means that for about 7.5 minutes the participants were a captive audience to the emergency. Therefore a single trial was a non-stop, 7.5-minute journey in either direction.

3. On each trial, a team of four students, (two males and two females), boarded the train using different doors. Four different teams, whose members always worked together, collected data for 103 trials. Each team varied the location of the experimental compartment from trial to trial. The female confederates sat outside the critical area and recorded data as unobtrusively as possible during the journey, while the male model and victim remained standing. The victim always stood next to a pole in the centre of the critical area. As the train passed the first station (approximately 70 seconds after departing), the victim staggered forward and collapsed. Until receiving help, he remained motionless on the floor, looking at the ceiling. If he received no help by the time the train slowed to a stop, the model helped him to his feet.

   • At the stop, the team got off and waited separately until other passengers had left the station before proceeding to another platform to board a train going in the opposite direction for the next trial. Six to eight trials were run on any given day and all trials on a given day were in the same 'victim condition'.
     • When the model intervened, he helped the victim to a sitting position and stayed with him for the remainder of the trial.
   • The four victims (one from each team) were males, aged between 26 and 35, three white, one black, all identically dressed in Eisenhower jackets, old slacks and no tie. On 38 trials the victims smelled of alcohol and car?ried a bottle of alcohol wrapped in a brown bag (drunk condition), while on the remaining 65 trials they appeared sober and carried a black cane (cane condition). In all other aspects, victims behaved identically in the two conditions, and each victim participated in drunk and cane trials. (There were more cane than drunk trials because one of the teams of students ?didn?t like? playing the drunk victim.

4. The models (white males aged 24 to 29) were all casually, but not identically, dressed. There were four different model conditions used across both drunk and cane victim conditions:

   • Critical area - early: the model would stand in the critical area and wait until passing the fourth station before he helped the victim (approximately 70 seconds after the collapse).
   • Critical area - late: the model would stand in the critical area and wait until passing the sixth station before he helped the victim (approximately 150 seconds after the collapse).
   • Adjacent area - early: the model would stand in the adjacent area and waited until passing the fourth station before he helped the victim.
   • Adjacent area - late: the model would stand in the adjacent area and waited until passing the sixth station before he helped the victim.