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Manuscript for experimental ps (Click to select text)
Running head: GENDER AND NUMBER OF BYSTANDERS Abstract This study was designed to look at the effects of gender and the number of bystanders on helping behavior. There were 128 participants in this study, compromising of students, faculty and also the general public in the area of Lexington, KY. The experiment was to drop pencils in an elevator when the correct number of bystanders were present to see who helped and who did not. The results of the study showed that the number of bystanders had no impact on whether the student who dropped his or her pencils was helped, however there was significant evidence that men were more likely to help than women. The Effects of Gender and the Number of Bystanders on Helping Behavior In the past decades, a large amount of research has been devoted to examining the connection between gender and helping behavior as well as the number of bystanders in relation to whether it will increase the willingness to help. This is to uncover the relationship between these factors, so people can be more prepared when faced with an emergency to know if they will receive any form of aid. By studying helping behavior, we can come up with ways to increase and promote helping behavior among the general public in order to bring about a caring and helping society. Stereotypically it is assumed that females would be more helpful than males, since they are perceived to be more expressive, caring and empathetic. This has been supported by a study that examined the effects of perceived costs on helping behavior in a university library (Dovidio, 1982). It was found that on the overall that female students helped more often in response to a request for some change as compared to male students, and this was especially true for situations involving members of the same sex. Tice and Baumeister (1985) who studied potential effects of dispositional sex-role orientation on bystander intervention in emergencies had found that masculinity inhibits helping in emergencies. According to their study, it is personality that predicts the bystander effect. Participants with highly masculine characteristics were less likely to take action to help the victim than were others, fearing potential embarrassment and loss of poise. Although supported to some extent, there have been several studies that indicate otherwise. An analysis on the effects of gender and dress on helping behavior indicated that women were helped more by other men and than other women. (Long, Mueller, Wyers, Khong, et al.,1996) Nevertheless, no definite line has been drawn to state whether women or men have higher tendencies to help other people the hypothesis that women help more in certain situations when compared to men has been supported. Women were found to score higher than men on low-risk, low-physical-strength helping behaviors, and lower than men on high-risk, high-physical-strength helping behaviors. (Erdle, Sasnom, Cole & Heapy, 1992). Another similar situation where the relationships between gender and modes of helping was studied. Belansky and Boggiano (1994) found that women were more likely to help than men, but more likely to help in a nurturing way than in a problem-solving way. The other goal of this experiment was to study the bystander effect. Contrary to popular belief that the more people there are during an emergency, the more help would be offered, studies have shown that in real life, the fewer bystanders there are at an emergency situation, the more likely the victim will receive any form of aid. The decreasing probability of an individual offering help in an emergency situation is inversely related to an increase in the size of the group in which he/she witnesses the event (Mishra & Das, 1983). There are several other factors affecting helpfulness, such as personal competency. In the study done by Cramer, McMaster, Bartell and Dragna (1988) on registered nurses and general education students, the responses to the post-emergency questionnaire indicated that at the time of the emergency both high and low-competent students strongly felt that they should do something to help the workman. Yet they lacked confidence in their ability to help the workman and in knowing what steps to take to help. Apart from self competency, attention too plays a role in affecting helping behavior. Dovidio and Campbell (1983) conducted three experiments designed to investigate the relationship between attention and helping behavior. In their research, they noted that brief periods of isolation have been shown to increase self-focus and decrease social sensitivity. True enough, they found that helping decreased following longer waiting periods (this effect was independent of mood - measured by a pilot tested questionnaire containing 6 bipolar adjective scales). It is clear that many factors come into play when measuring the bystander effect. Taking into consideration how countless extraneous factors can affect the outcome of a study, the current experiment was conducted in an elevator that created a very 'closed' environment. Also, the participants were caught unaware and they had no idea they were participating in the study so to avoid subject bias in any way. This experiment was conducted with two purposes in mind: to find out if gender was truly a factor in determining the level of helpfulness in a person and to see if the number of bystanders had any effect on helping behaviors of an individual or a small groups of individuals. Although research has shown competent support for both men and women being helpful, women have been typically linked to being helpful in situations that require less strength and more sensitivity or "low risk and low physical strength" situations as mentioned earlier in the study done by Erdle, Sasnom, Cole & Heapy (1992). From this it was hypothesized that women may be more helpful as compared to men picking up the fallen pencils in the elevator. As for the bystander effect, it is expected that the lesser the number of bystanders, the more help would be received. Method Participants There were 128 participants in this study, consisting mostly of college students, faculty and staff of the University of Kentucky. There were 60 males and 68 females. There was no compensation as the participants were unaware that they were part of a study and therefore not affected in any mental, emotional or physical way. Materials The items used in the experiment were a bundle of pencils and pens loosely bundled that were dropped during the study. The experimenter also carried a stack of books and a bag pack to make it seem as if he or she had a lot of things to carry and would require the help from someone to pick up the fallen pencils during the experiment. The information collected was then recorded on a data sheet. Procedure First, we carried out a randomizing procedure to determine a 'legal experimental opportunity' table. A legal experimental opportunity is defined as a situation where there is no one present who may have seen the pencil dropping before, no one with whom the experimenter is acquainted with and the proper number of bystanders are present (either 1 or 3). To determine the order of legal opportunities when the study can be conducted, the experimenter used the heads-tails method of flipping a coin: heads for 3 bystanders and tails for one bystander. A randomized table was then devised. Once the legal opportunity came along, the pencils were dropped. The experimenter said 'oh' and waited 2 seconds before picking them up to observe if anyone in the elevator offered to help. The results were then recorded on a data sheet when the experimenter left the elevator and was alone. Results A 2X2 (Gender x Bystander) ANOVA was performed to see if gender and number of bystanders had any effect on the amount of helping behavior offered. The mean help received with one bystander are (M = 1.55, SD =. 50) as shown in Figure 2 and the mean help received with three bystanders are (M = 1.53, SD = .50). Therefore, the main effect for number of bystanders and helping behavior was not significant F (1, 124) = .028, p .05. However, there was a statistically significant effect for gender of bystander and helping behavior, F (1, 124) = 4.043, p .05. It was shown that men are more likely to be helpful in a situation where someone is in need (M = 1.63, SD =. 49) and the females were (M = 1.46, SD = .50) as illustrated by Figure 2.The bystander effect and gender interaction was not significant, F (1, 124) = .028, ns. The Chi square was used to find out if there were any greater than expected frequency of help received in either of the bystander conditions. The result was x2 (1, N = 128) = .032, ns. Discussion The results of this experiment do not support the hypothesis that women are more helpful then men, but show that men are more helpful than women. There was however, no significant difference in the relationship between helping behavior and the number of bystanders. Our study was not consistent with past research, which more than often showed that women tended to be more helpful (Erdle, Sasnom, Cole & Heapy, 1992) or at least helpful in a manner which did not require much physical strength (Belansky & Boggiano 1994). There was also no clear relationship found between helping behavior and the number of bystanders from the results of our study. This was perhaps due to how the bystanders perceived the situation as not an emergency where the person could simply pick up the pencils and move on. Therefore, the bystanders felt they were not required to help. There were however several limitations in our study. First, the experimenters who did our study were mostly females themselves, which is an obvious form of experimenter bias. Men helped more since they were perhaps trying to be nice to the women and since the experiment was conducted on campus grounds, the students Several other factors may have contributed towards the level of helpfulness offered, such as the location depending on rural or urban environments (Amato, 1983) This study showed that people who lived in rural areas where less helpful when compared to their urban counterparts. Therefore, Lexington being somewhat a rural area may have been a factor influencing the number the people who helped. Also, research done by Harada (1983) studied how positive and negative experiences can have an effect on helping behavior. If the participant was positively reinforced for helping another person, then the chances of that person being more helpful is higher when compared to a person who perhaps had some mishap after helping someone. Also, factors that come into play such as personal responsibility decreasing when there are several other witnesses to such a situation. Further research in this study should definitely take the gender of the experimenter into consideration as it could have played a major role in affecting our results. Future researchers should make sure equal number of both sexes conduct the experiment. A larger population would also be beneficial to increase the external validity of the study. In addition, conducting the study in various parts of the world (rural, urban, 1st world countries, 3rd world countries etc.) would definitely bring about more concrete support in determining how gender and the number of bystanders affect helping behavior. Helping behaviors is important and in today's 'dog eat dog' world, it is pretty much a dying trait. Help is no longer offered out of empathy for personal satisfaction, but done with hope that they will be rewarded. A person would actually hesitate, weighing out the pros and cons of helping another individual before taking immediate action. Studies on helping behavior and what increases it or decreases it and in what situation it can be expected will definitely be helpful in our future. References Amato, P. R. (1983) Helping behavior in urban and rural environments: Field studies based on a taxonomic organization of helping episodes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 571 - 586. Belansky, E. S., & Boggiano, A. K.(1994) Predicting helping behaviors: The role of gender and instrumental/expressive self schemata.. Sex Roles, 30(9 10), 647-661. Bell, J., Grekul, J., Lamba, N., & Minas, C. (1995) The impact of cost on student helping behavior. Journal of Social Psychology, 135, 49-56. Cramer, R. E., McMaster, M. R., Bartell, P. A. & Dragna, M. (1988). Subject competence and minimization of the bystander effect. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 18, 1133-1148. Dovidio, J. F. (1982) Sex, costs, and helping behavior. Journal of Psychology ,112, 231- 236. Dovidio, J. F., & Campbell, J. B. (1983) Waiting to help? Attention and helping behavior. Academic Psychology Bulletin, 5(2), 229-236 Erdle, S., Sansom, M., Cole, M. R., & Heapy, N. (1992) Sex differences in personality correlates of helping behavior. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(8), 931-936. Harada, J. (1983) The effects of positive and negative experiences on helping behavior. Japanese Psychological Research, 25(1), 47-51. Long, D. A., Mueller, J. C., Wyers, R., & Khong, V. (1996) Effects of gender and dress on helping behavior. Psychological Reports, 78(3), 987-994. Mishra, Pravash K., Das, Braja K. (1983) Group size and helping behavior: A comprehensive review. Perspectives in Psychological Researches, 6(2), 60-64. Solomon, L. Z., Solomon, H., & Maiorca, J., (1982) The effects of bystander's anonymity, situational ambiguity, and victim's status on helping. Journal of Social Psychology. 117, 285 294. Shotland, R. L. (1983) What is wrong with helping behavior research? Only the independent and dependent variables. Academic Psychology Bulletin,5(2), 339-350 Tice, D. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1985). Masculinity inhibits helping in emergencies: Personality does predict the bystander effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,49,420-428. Tables Table 1 Analyses of Variance: Number of Bystander and Help Received Number of bystanders M SD 1 bystander 1.55 .50 3 bystanders 1.53 .50 Table 2 Analyses of Variance: Gender and Help Received Gender M SD Female 1.46 .50 Male 1.63 .49
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