Latané and Darley’s Model of Helping
Need Help? Don’t Be Shy To Ask.
Helping others
during an emergency is one of the basic natures of human beings. However, it
can be hard to notice some of the unexpected things around us when conducting
activities in our daily lives. Considering that emergencies are unusual and
dangerous, people do not always know what to do when faced with such situations.
According to the insights presented by the textbook, any behavior that is
designed to help another person during an emergency without any direct reward
is called altruism. Additionally, the social norms for helping, which include
the reciprocity norm, remind people to follow the principles of reciprocal
altruism and the social responsibility norm. Such principles demand that people
try to help others who need assistance, even without future payback
expectations.
To better
understand the processes of helping in an emergency, Darley et al. developed a
model of helping that determines whether a bystander will help or not help
during a situation. The decision model of bystander intervention has
represented an important theoretical framework for helping us understand the
role of situational variables in helping. According to the model, whether or
not we help depends on the outcomes of a series of decisions that involve
noticing the event, interpreting the situation as one that requires assistance,
deciding to take personal responsibility, and implementing action. For
instance, people with generous personalities are more helpful than others.
Moreover, the perception of the need is important, considering that people tend
to help some people more than others.
The research conducted previously on bystander intervention during an emergency shows that an individual is more likely to intervene if he witnesses the emergency alone than an individual in a group. The study presented by the article aimed to investigate the bystander effect. The study qualified the general finding from the previous studies in the framework of group communication processes. During the experiment, fifty male Princeton University undergraduates served as subjects where Pairs of subjects working on a task overheard a loud crash in an adjoining room.
Some subjects were seated in a pattern that facilitated the visual communication exchanges that naturally occur when a noisy event occurs. Others were seated to block these communications. When the emergency occurred, groups which could exchange reactions were not reliably less likely to respond than were the third group of subjects who faced the emergency alone. The blocked communications groups tended not to respond and responded significantly less than the other two conditions. These results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that a group of people who witness an ambiguous event interact with arriving at a definition or interpretation of it, which then guides each member's reactions to the event (Darley et al., 1973).
Contact us now to get custom essays written for you in less than 12 hours
The results supported the experimental hypothesis of the bystander's effect, which states that an individual tends to intervene during an emergency compared to when in a group. The results from the experiment showed that 80% of the groups in a face-to-face orientation responded to the crash with the offer of some help. In contrast, only 20% of those groups not facing each other reacted when the incident occurred.
Similarly, 90% of subjects reacted to the situation when
alone. As a result, 99% of a set of
two-person groups could be expected to contain at least one individual who
responds. Suppose the effect of the group on helping behavior is due to
anything other than a simple increase in the number of people over the alone
condition. In that case, the rate of helping in a group should be significantly
different from 99% (Darley et al., 1973).
Moreover, the
results also showed that the response rate of the face-to-face groups was not
significantly different from the value. While the 20% response rate of the
non-facing condition was significantly lower, the Helping rate was affected not
simply by the presence of other bystanders but by their physical orientation.
The groups in a facing orientation were more likely to respond than non-facing
groups. Besides, the facing groups were not significantly slower or less likely
to respond than those alone when the incident occurred.
To better
understand the processes of helping in an emergency, Darley et al. developed a
model of helping that determines whether a bystander will help or not help
during a situation. According to the model, several processes may be involved
in the bystander's effect, which is related to the definition of the situation.
The first step is noticing the emergency where the bystander sees the event.
The second step is to assume responsibility, where a person assumes
responsibility assumes that others will offer help. The proposed five-step
decision model of help can be utilized to determine what a bystander might decide
to do during an emergency situation that requires intervention.
Need Help? Don’t Be Shy To Ask.
References
Darley, J., Teger, A., & Lewis, L. (1973). Do groups
always inhibit individuals' responses to potential emergencies?. Journal
Of Personality And Social Psychology, 26(3), 395-399.
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034450
SHAVER, K. (2017). PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.
PSYCHOLOGY Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment