Prosocial behaviour lab summary
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Victor Urud conducted an experiment to study whether people who witness someone in need of help would choose to help or not. The experiment involved planting an actor who dropped a box of pens in public to see if passersby would help. Cameras recorded subjects' reactions. Urud found that men were more likely to help than women, though the numbers were close. He also observed the "bystander effect," where people in groups were less likely to help due to not wanting to break conversation or draw attention. While the numbers were similar between genders, Urud concluded through observations that men were overall more inclined to help strangers in need.
Prosocial behaviour lab summary
- 1. Victor Urud Psychology Prosocial Behaviour Lab Summary The purpose of this experiment is to determine whether people who witnessed another person in need of help, would react in a positive way by helping them, or would just walk off as if nothing happens.My hypothesis is that men would be the ones more helpful than women. In this experiment, I would like to determine whether people who witnessed another person in need of help, would choose to help or not to. A box of writing utensils is needed in this experiment, where a victim of a situation would drop the box of writing utensils and test subjects that would wonder around and come across this victim, and their decision would be recorded of where they decide to help the victim or not. Cameras are set up around to record every action of the test subject. This method of dropping the box of writing utensils could happen anywhere in the real world and is a feasible method as it is a situation that is most likely to occur in areas such as school. During the conduction of the experiment, an observation I made is that one test subject hesitated to help a victim when the victim was seen already being helped by another person. By just having a person around, it affects another persons decision to help another in distress, thus the bystander effect. An observation I made, when in a group, people may have been busy up in a conversation with each other or may not have wanted to be the person to break the conversation, no one from the group helped the victim. Two women had similar behaviours when experimented upon, they both saw the victim in distress, but continued on walking slowly, though they acknowledge the person in distress. What I noticed throughout the whole experiment is that men did not just helped, they intended on helping with a smile on their face.
- 2. Victor Urud Psychology According to this graph, we could see that the number of men who helped versus the number of women, who helped, goes more towards men though the numbers are close. We could see that men are more likely to help, rather than women. To my conclusion, men had the better number on helping rather than the opposite gender. But there was one factor that prevented both genders from helping the victim, the Bystander Effect, when not alone in the same situation. The Bystander Effect is where the more number of people in an area, the less likely that people are to help another in distress. The Bystander Effect plays a big role on whether a person would help another in distress. Though this may not connect on the gender roles, it affects the data of where a person may help while being in the Bystander Effect. Looking at the chart graph, we could see that men are more likely to help rather than women. The numbers may be close, but it is through the observations that tilted the result of the experiment.