Good Samaritanism: An underground phenomenon?

Abstract

A field experiment was performed to investigate the effect of several variables on helping behavior, using the express trains of the New York 8th Avenue Independent Subway as a laboratory on wheels. Four teams of students, each one made up of a victim, model, and two observers, staged standard collapses in which type of victim (drunk or ill), race of victim (black or white) and presence or absence of a model were varied. Data recorded by observers included number and race of observers, latency of the helping response and race of helper, number of helpers, movement out of the "critical area, " and spontaneous comments. Major findings of the study were that (a) an apparently ill person is more likely to receive aid than is one who appears to be drunk, (b) race of victim has little effect on race of helper except when the victim is drunk, (c) the longer the emergency continues without help being offered, the more likely it is that someone will leave the area of the emergency, and (d) the expected decrease in speed of responding as group size increases— the "diffusion of responsibility effect " found by Darley and Latane—does not occur in this situation. Implications of this difference between laboratory and field results are discussed, and a brief model for the prediction of behavior in emergency situations is presented. Since the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, a rapidly increasing number of social scientists have turned their attentions to the study of the good Samaritan's act and an associated phenomenon, the evaluation of victims by bystanders and agents. Some of the findings of this research have been provocative and nonobvious. For example, there is evidence that agents, and even bystanders, will sometimes derogate the character of the victims of misfortune, instead of feeling compassion