Ib Psychology - the Effects of Gender and Ethnicity on the Bystander Effect

PSYCHOLOGY FIELD EXPERIMENT

THE EFFECTS OF GENDER AND ETHNICITY

ON THE BYSTANDER EFFECT

Aim

In our field experiment, we aimed to identify the effects of gender and ethnicity on peoples’ decision to help someone in need. In order to determine the effects of gender, we decided to investigate whether males or females were more likely to help. We also decided to see if the gender of the person in need affected the witnesses’ decision to help. We also wanted to investigate the effects of ethnicity on the Bystander effect.

Hypothesis

With the assumption that there would still be diffusion of responsibility, we believed that not many people would help the person in need because of the Bystander effect. If the participants did help the person in need, we believed that they were more likely to help if the person in need was of the same ethnicity or a gender of interest.

Supporting Research

The Bystander effect, also known as “Genovese Syndrome”, was discovered in 1964 by Bibb Latané and John Darley, whose study was inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was killed in a stabbing in front of her apartment on March 13, 1964. During her brutal murder, there was a total count of around 38 witnesses, though not one of them called the police till the last minute. The call was made by Karl Ross, but it was too late and Kitty Genovese died in the arms of her neighbour Sophie Farrar. The lack of intervention and attention given to this attack sparked controversy among authorities and caught the eyes of many psychologists. Our group decided to focus on the study and experiments carried out by Latané and Darley to further determine whether the ethnicity or gender of someone in need affects witnesses.

The Bystander effect suggests that there is a diffusion of responsibility when there is a larger group of people who witness someone in need. Individuals do not feel the need to help others because they expect other people who are witnessing the event will help. Latané and Darley confirmed that due to the Bystander effect, people did not help Kitty.

We decided to carry out our own experiment in Victoria Park to test the Bystander effect, seeing whether people in the area would decide to help a person in need. By observing reactions, as well as the genders and ethnicities of the participants and confederates, we would be able to see the effects of gender and ethnicity on the Bystander effect.

Method

In order to be able to observe participant’s natural behaviour, we decided to carry out our experiment in a natural environment, covertly. However, this limited our ability to control variables, for example whether participants actually saw the confederate fall. Participants were selected using opportunity sampling as it was the most efficient for the limited time. It also prevented researcher bias, as we would be kept from selecting participants who would help to prove and confirm our hypothesis.

Once a random bystander was chosen, the confederate would run pass and trip near them. One researcher would note down the gender and ethnicity of the confederate, while the other would observe the reactions of the targeted individual.

Ethical Issues

There were many ethical issues with our experiment as it was carried out covertly. We were unable to ask participants for consent and there was use of deception in order to obtain the best possible results from the participants natural behaviour.

Although we deceived the participants who were involved in our experiment, we neglected to debrief them. However, this can be justified as there is no long term damage on the participants due to the harmless nature of our experiment. We neglected to follow guidelines on confidentiality, though this was fairly unnecessary as we only noted required data of the gender and ethnicity of participants.

Results

We tested a total number of 35 participants who were randomly chosen through opportunity sampling. Our data was recorded in two ways, tallying which provided quantitative data and observations which provided qualitative data.

Quantitative Data

The table below shows the number of participants who helped or showed concern out of all the participants tested. This includes their gender and which confederate they showed concern for. It was completed by tallying the total number of bystanders who helped each confederate:

We found that the same number of males and females helped the white female confederate, while one more female than male showed concern for the Chinese female confederate. More male than female participants showed concern for the Chinese male confederate.

We failed to include data of whether participants who showed concern for the confederates shared the same ethnicity. This caused our data to lose its’ credibility as we were unable to confirm if ethnicity created bias when it came to helping someone in need.

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