Discuss research relating to bystander behaviour.

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Lyndsey Paterson

Discuss research relating to bystander behaviour (24 marks)

The murder of Kitty Genovese and the bystander behaviour that was apparent that night triggered a great deal of research to explain bystander behaviour. Latane & Darley suspected that the fact that the number of possible helpers was so large might actually have contributed to their lack of intervention. They processes that might explain the reluctance of others to ‘get involved’ in situations such as the Kitty Genovese incident.

The Diffusion of Responsibility explanation suggests that the more witnesses there are to a person needing help, the less anyone witness feels responsible for giving help. Latane & Darley conducted a lab based experiment using male university students seated in individual cubicles connected by an intercom system, believing they had come to take part in a discussion on collage life. Students were lead to believe they were on their own, alone with one other participant who would later appear to have an epileptic seizure, or an increasing number of other participants. Help was less likely and slower to be given when participants believed that other potential helpers were available. The findings from this study support the notion of diffusion of responsibility as, as suggested the more witness there were to the victim needing help, the less the participant felt a sloe responsibility to help. Participants assumed that his intervention would not be necessary, as confederates would have taken care of the situation. However, it could be argued that as the experiment was lab based it holds no ecological validity, and therefore the results cannot be generalised to real life situations. Participants reluctance to help may have been caused by an attempt to avoid social disapproval (e.g. being the odd one out), or they may also have picked up demand characteristics from experimenters or other confederates as to the true nature of the experiment and felt they needed to supply the experimenters with the results they required.

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Latane & Draley also proposed the Pluralistic Ignorance theory. This hypothesis suggests that when making a decision about whether or not to help, we look to see what other bystanders are doing. If other bystanders appear to act as if the situation is an emergency situation and help the victim, we are likely to do the same. If no one else offers to help we are unlikely to offer help as well. In the smoke filled room experiment participants were invited to take part in what they thought was a psychological experiment. While waiting for it to ‘begin’ they ...

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The Quality of Written Communication is very good. The candidate demonstrates a clear understanding of how to shape text in order to convey meaning clearly, even when complex vocabulary like that which is expected of an A Level psychology candidate needs to be incorporated. Every use is appropriate and doesn't feel clunky or wrongly-applied, and this helps create an idea of confidence about the work in the examiner's head, and so spell-checks and proof-reads are always good to ensure the optimum in written expression for the examiner.

The Level of Analysis shown here is good, and it is integrated well into the rest of the essay, helping the fluidity of the structure and the essay overall. Perhaps a little more detail could be given when speaking about Piliavin's study, and a little more clarity on the creation of investigation (what type of research was it? What were the conditions? Approximately how many participants were involved? etc.) Elsewhere, there is a good use of the Latane & Darley study and the corresponding theory, and the evaluation in the final paragraph nicely rounds off the essay by consulting all of the research and criticising them for their ethnocentric bias.

The candidate hear clearly has a very good idea about the role of bystander behaviour in social psychology, as well as the theory of Diffusion of Responsibility as proposed by Latane & Darley. The candidate uses this theory well and implements good analysis of the procedure and results of a variety of studies whilst describing them. This integrated approach makes the answer more succinct and confident-sounding. It also gives the impression the answer was pre-planned, and so indicates a lot of time and care put into the answer by the candidate. I would argue that perhaps a look into the reasons for Piliavin, Rodin & Piliavin's study into subway samaritanism could be implemented into the answer, citing the development of the Arousal-Cost-Reward-Model they proposed after the investigation, and also the rather interesting results found with regards to the lack of Diffusion of Responsibility inside the subway carriages (they found the number of passengers in the carriages to have no effect on the intervention time). This would be a good way to evaluate Latane & Darley's study because it would show an ability to use updated empirical research in order to test theories that may be out-dated and/or found not to exist in certain social situations.