The psychological perspective delivered to us the “Negative-state Relief Model”, the “Empathy-Altruism Model”, the theory of the “Bystander Effect”, and the “Arousal-Cost-Reward Model”.
Schaller & Cialdini’s “Negative-state Relief Model” proposed that helping others was a way of reducing the distress caused by witnessing the incident. Pilavin’s “Arousal-Cost-Reward Model” appears to be its successor, proposing that the onlooker’s distress is a form of emotional arousal created whenever an emergency situation is being watched. Helping with the situation, argued Pilavin, who proposed the model, reduces the unpleasantness caused by the arousal, but this both incurs costs for and rewards the helper, who would attempt to analyse whether helping was worth, and using his analysis of the situation, decides what is to be done next.
The “Arousal-Cost-Reward Model” has its origins in the theory of the “Bystander Effect”. Latane & Darley, the founders of this theory, argued that people often decline to help in emergencies when two factors are in force: people would think that help is already offered, or should be offered by somebody else, given that so many are watching the events unfold, giving rise to a “Diffusion of Responsibility”; as a member of perhaps a large crowd of people in any given situation, one would often resort to observing the actions of others in order to decide what to do, and when others do not react in a manner which suggests that they are in an emergency, possibly but not necessarily due to the diffusion of responsibility, but in many cases due to ambiguity about a situation, this would be when the second factor, known as “Pluralistic Ignorance”, begins to take effect.
In 1981, Batson et al. proposed a theory that constitutes a serious challenge to Pilavin’s ideas. The “Empathy-Altruism Model” suggests that apart from the self-interested type of help offered to relieve personal distress, should one develop empathetic concern for another person, the help offered to him would be selfless and regardless of cost or rewards whatsoever. Batson also argues, probably against most psychologists of the era, that empathy is an innate trait, but he could not provide any explanation as to why the level of empathy could not be predicted.
These theories, from both the evolutionary and the psychological perspectives, form the basis of modern day psychological analysis into human altruistic behaviour.
So far, however, these theories were mainly based on research carried out in one culture, and most often only in the country to which their proposers belong. However, one concern of psychologists in more recent decades is the “ethnocentricity” as a result of these research methods. Psychology is seen by many as a branch of science, and is commonly referred to as a social science. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “science” as “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment”. Scientific experiments are carried out using the scientific method, which involves mainly the making of a hypothesis, which is then tested empirically, from the results of which conclusions are drawn, and theories are then proposed. Empirical research in the discipline of psychology involves more than anything else deductive processes, in which conclusions in the form of generalisations are drawn from evidence, with the expectation that these generalisations could be applied in the future to various situations by means of inductive processes.
Thus, ethnocentric research methods can potentially undermine the entire academic discipline of psychology, because the results they yield explain at best the causes for a certain behavioural trait in a culture, instead off the entire human race that they claim to represent.
One example to illustrate this would be the experiments conducted by Pilavin et al. in 1969 to prove their Arousal-Cost-Reward Model. This experiment involved having a “victim”, which is a male aged between 25 and 35, who either appears drunk, or ill and holding a cane, falling to the floor of the subway train whilst it was in motion during a seven-and-a-half minute journey between stations. The experiments took place on the New York subway during the early hours of the morning. Pilavin then found that help was offered in 93% of the time, the “cane victim” received help 100% of the time, whilst the drunken man received help only in 81%. Median response time for the cane victim was 5 seconds; that for the drunken man: 109 seconds. From this he attempted to conclude that people hesitate to help the drunken man because they were less sympathetic to him than to the “cane victim”, that helping him is potentially dangerous and involves a high cost should the man turn violent, and that there is less reward or psychological satisfaction arising from helping a drunken man, for the drunken man is perceived to have caused his own victimisation.
As has been defined at the start of this essay, the word “culture” can refer to societies in their entirety. As “melting pots of cultures”, America and an increasing number of countries worldwide are effectively becoming collections of smaller societies. In New York and many more cities, foreign immigrants or the believers of certain religions often form tightly knit communities, in which they would attempt to preserve their native traditions and resist assimilation. “Pillarisation” was a serious problem in pre-war Dutch society, which was effectively split into three independent, self-sufficient societies, or “pillars”, formed of Catholics, Protestants, and social democrats. This can possibly be a future problem for Britain, which in recent years has seen the establishment of Sharia Law Courts for its Muslim population, and a dramatic increase in the number of Hindu and Islamic schools. In many places across the world, social classes in their long history of confrontation against and isolation from the rest of society have produced distinctive cultures of their own.
When most talk of cross-cultural research, it would seem to them that the term meant psychological experiments done on an international scale. It is often forgotten, however, that in countries like America, where the cultures are so diverse from region to region, and indeed from one part to another of the same city, not only will experiments like Pilavin’s fail to represent an entire nation, it is doubtful if they can at all represent the cities in which they were carried out. It is clear that his conclusions are regionally specific, for the experiment was not repeated outside America; indeed it was not repeated in another city in the country. The best that he can claim of the experimental results are that they reflects only the psychology of the population of a certain part of America, more appropriately, that of the city of New York.
The subway train in Pilavin’s experiment was travelling between the New York districts of Queens and Bronx, which in 1969 were infamous as being where New York’s ghettoes were situated, and were inhabited by much of New York’s African American population and white families of lower social-economic status. Would the results have been different if the experiment was conducted on a train running in Manhattan or on Long Island? Given the social conditions in Manhattan and ethnic and class composition of the subway users there, this is very possible. Thus his experiment can only offer an understanding of the helping behaviour of people in the districts of Queens and Bronx of New York(or passengers travelling on that subway line which may originate from districts other than these two), and not the entire New York city, let alone the whole country.
In fact, Pilavin’s experiment can at best only reflect the behaviour of New York subway passengers. One aspect common about the users of public transport systems across the world is that they usually belong to certain classes and social stratums. In 1969 New York they were most probably the lower to lower-middle classes, since automobiles have become affordable for most households of the upper-middle classes at the time. As New York became more affluent one year after another the ridership on the subway fell until it reached in the late 1970s a figure barely enough for it to survive as the means of transport for the very poor. It is not difficult to imagine that the distinctive psychological patterns of the experimental subjects developed as a result of their social background can have a profound effect on the results of the experiment. Clearly, in this experiment the upper and upper-middle, car-owning classes have not been represented, because they do not form a significant part in the class composition of the passengers carried by the subway.
Cross-cultural research attempts to solve these problems by giving these theories a wider foundation and greater representation. It should take into account people of different racial backgrounds, social backgrounds, professions, living areas, etc. Its greatest failure should be the exclusion of any one of the social groups which should be taken into account in the research process. Should the theory attempt to cover the entire human race, therefore, cross-cultural research should ideally cover all social groups in human society. This is of course an impossibility, but there are many examples of grave errors made in cross-cultural research, which results in its failure to determine the causes of human altruism.
One such failure is a piece of cross-cultural research carried out by Robert V. Levine et al. to compare altruistic behaviour in cities across the world. In 36 American cities, and 23 international ones, experimenters from Levine’s team would stage situations in which help was needed from other pedestrians, such as a man with an injured leg dropping his magazine onto the ground, or a blind man requiring assistance to cross a busy road. There is however no mention at all of where in those cities were these experiments carried out. In cities such as Shanghai, where per capita GDP values are lower compared to those in developed countries, Levine recorded a higher helping rate, leading to his conclusion that people in cities with lower economic productivity tend to be more helpful. It is apparent to us, however, that not all areas of Shanghai share the same economic productivity; living costs in the business districts can easily rival those in American cities. If it is proven that Levine’s experiments were conducted in the wealthier areas of these cities, areas with an economic productivity that matches the cities criticised as apathetic by Levine, does it imply that the whole theory he has proposed stands in fact on shaky grounds?
Robert Levine’s studies also indicated a fundamental inadequacy in cross-cultural research. In his article written for American Scientist, “The Kindness of Strangers”, Levine concluded that “helping rates tended to be high in countries with low economic productivity (low gross domestic product per capita…), in cities with a slow pace of life (as measured by pedestrian walking speeds) and in cultures that emphasize the value of social harmony”. He refers to all this as the city’s “personality”. Cross-cultural psychological research may be a useful method of narrowing the possibilities that cause human altruism down to a few fundamental factors, as in Robert Levine’s theory, but no more. It cannot tell us the underlying connections between these three factors, and we are left to wonder whether it was the collectivist culture advocating social harmony that slowed down the pace of life, which in turn reduced the economic productivity of the city; or the exact reverse, where culture is formed as a result of social economic forces. It does not tell us whether this collectivist culture was created by religious teachings, or if the culture in fact predates the religion which was probably a product of that culture. Should the latter be the case it may point to the possibility that collectivism, same as cooperation and altruism is an innate trait among humans, but cross-cultural research stops short of providing any substantial proof at all.
Robert Levine’s approach to analysing these cities also brings in the question of the measurability of cultures. He has attempted a statistical approach, by the use of GDP figures, and measuring average walking speeds, as tools to compare one city against another. Evidently he saw statistics as more reliable than other cultural components which cannot be measured. Does this not in the long term reduce “cultures” or “societies” into “economies”, and render cross-cultural research merely as an economic, rather than a comprehensive approach, which includes the study of social, cultural and historical factors, to determining the causes of altruistic behaviour? However, if these factors cannot be measured, how should an objective standard for comparing different cultures be then established?
Cross-cultural research has provided psychological theories with a much wider informational basis. Theories supported by cross-cultural research, represents what it wishes to better, than those which are not. It is, however, beset by problems. Factors such as the social composition of the experimental subjects, and the areas of the city or country where the experiments take place, will have a great effect on the outcome of these studies, but they tend to be overlooked. Cross-cultural research may be able to isolate a few possible causes, but cannot show us which one is of greater importance over another. It has to potential to favour economic statistics and bias against cultural influences that are not as clearly measurable and objective as the former. These inadequacies of cross-cultural research may have diminished its effectiveness, but we must acknowledge that throughout the past decades, it has made great contributions, in our efforts to probe into the causes of human altruistic behaviour.
