Investigation of the Effect of Bystander Behaviour on Helping Behaviour in a Non-Emergency Situation
Investigation of the Effect of Bystander Behaviour on Helping Behaviour in a Non-Emergency Situation Abstract One model explaining whether people offer assistance in emergency situations is diffusion of responsibility: the greater the number of bystanders present, the less personal responsibility is felt by each bystander. A second model, the normative theory, suggests that people comply with social norms, being more likely to help if an appropriate helping response is modelled by others. To investigate which model best accounts for helping behaviour, a naturalistic study was conducted in which participants were able to offer help in a minor emergency. The participants were 1122 undergraduates from Monash University. Most helping was demonstrated when no bystanders were present. The results supported the diffusion of responsibility theory more than the normative theory. In 1964, a New York city woman Kitty Genovese was brutally stabbed to death outside her apartment block. Of the 38 witnesses, none offered assistance, not even the simple act of notifying the police (Latane & Nida, 1981). This failure to help stimulated research into understanding why bystanders often fail to give assistance in emergency situations. Latane and Darley (1970) wondered why people were unwilling to offer assistance in emergencies when they were quite happy to help in non-emergencies. They
Evaluate the contribution of the social perspective to our understanding of language and meaning and the psychology of sex and gender
DSE212: TMA06 [DSE212: TMA06] Question Evaluate the contribution of the social perspective to our understanding of language and meaning and the psychology of sex and gender. Essay Different psychological perspectives lead to different theories providing diverse insights into the same issue i.e. language and meaning. They focus their enquiry in different ways and consequently have dissimilar objects of knowledge. Each perspective asks different questions, use different methods and data and produce therefore different theories. These perspectives can be complementary, conflicting and/or coexisting, whereby each perspective and theory provides a variety of ways of applying their findings to everyday psychological problems. By focusing on the social psychological perspective, this essay will initially evaluate how this perspective contributes to a greater understanding in the formation, acquisition and use of language and how this understanding co-exists with, and may be complimented by or is in contrast to, other perspectives and how this fits in with the understanding of sex and gender. Social psychological perspectives emphasise the importance of investigating cognition by studying how meaning is created through participation and cultural practices and through language. The evolvement, acquisition and application of language used by humans, to express meaning and pursue
Assessing Competency to Take the Oath
Assessing Competency to Take the Oath 'I swear by Almighty God that I will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.' This oath is well-known within the context of the courtroom, uttered by a witness prior to giving evidence. Considerable value is placed on it as breaking the oath by telling a lie (perjuring) is a criminal offence. Before giving evidence, a witness' competence in understanding the nature and consequences of the oath are assessed. A competent witness is considered one who fully understands that he is obligated to tell the truth when under oath and if he is discovered to have lied or misled the court, will suffer the appropriate penalty for perjury. Thus, the purpose of the oath is to assure the accuracy of the subsequent testimony. With the adoption of the Federal Rules of Evidence in 1979, Rule 601 provided that 'every person is competent to be a witness except as otherwise provided in these rules' yet competency hearings granted courts 'the power to disqualify witnesses with limited mental or moral capacities' (Gold, 1992). There has been much debate concerning whether people suffering from specific mental illnesses, developmental disorders or learning disabilities are able to be competent witnesses, as those providing evidence in court must understand the difference between truth and falsehood and appreciate the obligation to tell the
The more violence is watched by children, the more they may become less sensitive to the pain and sufferings of others and the more likely they will behave aggressively or harmful towards others.
The more violence is watched by children, the more they may become less sensitive to the pain and sufferings of others and the more likely they will behave aggressively or harmful towards others. The effects of violence shown on television towards children may vary depending on the child's age group, how much television they watch each day and their reactions to what they have been watching. What children see, they tend to imitate. And what they see on both broadcast and cable television is violence, real and stimulated (Arnow, 1995:12). There is a strong correlation between the viewing of violent images and aggressive behaviour among children. The more a child is exposed to violence on television, there is a greater chance it will have a long lasting effect on their behaviour (Arnow, 1995:12). The impact of television on children is easily understood because most infants have the desire and capacity to imitate adult behaviour (Arnow, 1995:14). Young children tend to mirror adult facial expressions and behaviours. As the child becomes a toddler, they are incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy on television. Parents should continually remind their children that television is not real life (Luke, 1988:124). Violent television shows; such as wrestling are making kids fight more on the playgrounds and making society generally a more violent place to
According to attribution theorists the laypersons judgments of others are biased
Social Psychology 1PSY514 According to attribution theorists the layperson's judgments of others are biased. Discuss the evidence for supposing that these biases are inevitable. Attribution theory is a social psychology theory developed by Fritz Heider in 1958 who was the first to propose this psychological theory, he saw people as lay psychologists that are trying to establish causal explanations noting that there are two consequences of the attribution process, the internal and external attribution. Internal assumes that the cause of behaviour is within the person and the external that the cause of behaviour is outside of the person , for example other people or other factors within the environment. Attribution theory is concerned with how individuals understand events and how this relates to their behavior , stating that people try to determine why other individuals do what they do by giving causal explanations. A person that seeks to understand the reason why another person did something may attribute more than one causes to that behavior. During attribution there are three stages a person must undergo in order to finalize their explanation, firstly the person must observe the behavior, secondly the person must be sure that the event that took place was intentionally performed and then the person have to end to a conclusion if the other person was forced to
When we commit the fundamental attribution error in explaining people's behaviour we overestimate the power of personality traits and underestimate the power of social influence. Discuss this statement with reference to Milgram's studies on obedience.
When we commit the fundamental attribution error in explaining people's behaviour we overestimate the power of personality traits and underestimate the power of social influence. Discuss this statement with reference to Milgram's studies on obedience. Milgram (1963) demonstrated that the majority of the subjects in his studies on obedience (65 per cent) - "average, decent American citizens" (Milgram, 1963. p.5 ) who had volunteered for a Yale University experiment on learning - would administer painful electric shocks up to 450 volts to another volunteer, despite the latter's protests. The findings of Milgram's studies are frequently cited as an example of the power of situational strengths in shaping behaviour and of the tendency to underestimate social influence and instead attribute people's behaviour to their dispositions or character, i.e. to commit the fundamental attribution error (e.g., Bierbrauer, 1979; Safer, 1980). With reference to the behaviour of the subjects in Milgram's studies on obedience this essay critically explores the claim that we commit the fundamental attribution error when we overestimate the power of personality traits and underestimate the power of social influence. The essay begins by outlining Milgram's basic procedure. It then discusses the extent to which Milgram's findings can be explained in terms of the power of the situation.
How have Milgram's studies on obedience helped us to understand this topic?
Lucy Kyle How have Milgram's studies on obedience helped us to understand this topic? Some of the most horrific violations on human life occurred during the 2nd World War. These shocking atrocities were carried out by fellow human beings who, afterwards attempted to justify themselves by declaring that they had only been following orders. It is difficult to imagine these people as anything other than sadistic psychopaths, yet it seems impossible that they were all like that. It is clear that personality does not always explain how people act. It was these appalling persecutions which ordinary people willingly carried out during the 2nd world war which influenced Stanley Milgram (1963; cited in The Perils of Obedience, www.colchsfc.ac.uk/psychology/milgram.htm, 23/10/02) to investigate the possibility that normal people would readily administer pain onto another person when instructed to by a figure of authority in controlled settings. His experiment produced intriguing results and is widely considered to be the greatest research in modern social psychology. Throughout this essay I hope to explore how Milgram conducted his experiments and what his findings mean to social psychology. The initial obedience experiment was carried out on men in New Haven, Connecticut. It was not until later that it was carried out on women, mainly because of Milgram's original interest in what
symbolic interactionism and deviance
Symbolic interactionists posit that no act or behaviour is inherently deviant. Drawing upon other major sociological theories of social deviance explains how symbolic interactionists justify this claim. Social deviance is defined as 'Differing from a norm or from the accepted standards of a society' (dictionary.com). A deviant is one that differs from a norm, especially a person whose behavior and attitudes differ from accepted social standards. Generally, explanations for deviance have one of two focal points. The first is the individual where the causes of deviance are held to reside in the biological or psychological make up of particular types of people or in the kinds of choices that individuals freely make. While focus on individual behaviour is thought to be effective, there is good evidence to suggest 'the causes of crime cannot be satisfactorily derived by reference to biology, psychology or wilful action alone (Winter and Lemert and Lemert 2000, p.12). This has led to the development of a second focal point for the explanations of deviant behaviour - the nature of social relations, or more simply, society. Given the importance of the impact of deviance on society, many approaches have been used to attempt to understand why people engage in deviant behaviour. Symbolic interactionists argue that deviance is "relative". That is, what might be considered in one group
The Mertonian Principles Revised: Can the Normative Structure of SciencePrevent Fraud?
IN THE PAST, SCIENCE HAS been commonly associated with the pursuit of truth in a controlled and honest manner. For this reason, the existence of fraud within the scientific craft has been largely ignored, partly owing to its assumed non-existence, but also because it was traditionally maintained that the normative structure of science possessed inherent mechanisms to prevent deviant acts in scientific inquiry. The present essay calls this assumption into question and investigates the extent to which the structure of science averts scientific misconduct. To achieve this goal, the study starts by defining scientific fraud and then scrutinizes the idealistic conceptualizations of the normative structure of science in order to determine whether these are presently applicable or not. Finally, the paper addresses several potential motivational factors leading scientists to commit fraud and demonstrates that certain aspects of the scientific structure rather than the individual make such acts possible or even likely. Although a precise definition is lacking, by scientific fraud we understand an act of deception whereby one's work or the work of others is consciously and intentionally misrepresented. It belongs to the wider category of scientific misconduct, defined as deviation from accepted ethical practices for proposing, conducting, and reporting research.1 Scientific fraud may
Paper review - Social cognition & the human brain.
Paper reviewed by Melanie Darwood as part of the requirement for Cognitive Anthropology module, BSc Cognitive Science. Paper Title: Social Cognition & the Human Brain, Written by Ralph Adolphs, from Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Humans are extremely social animals, but the neural foundations of social cognition & behaviour aren't well understood. Studies have highlighted structures that have a key role in guiding social behaviour, including the amygdale, ventromedial frontal cortices & right somatosensory-related cortex. They appear to act as a go-between between perceptual representations & retrieval of knowledge. Social cognition refers to processes that subserve behaviour in response to conspecifics (that is, other individuals of the same species) particularly those concerned with the varied & flexible social behaviours found in primates. It is suggested that humans' unique cognitive skills can be traced to development in an environment in which there was a reward for social skills. To support this there is correlation between group size & the ratio of neo-cortex volume to the rest of the brain among numerous primate species, also for other mammals that have a complex social structure. Another suggestion is that brain size correlates with other factors, such as tool use, longevity or dietary foraging strategy, but brain size could be a partial result of primates