See You Around Campus:
Why People Help, Why They Don’t
and What To Do About It.
Prepared for
Counseling Centers of New York
Caroline F. Keating, Ph.D.
Colgate University
June 6, 2013
A counselor, a social worker,
and a social psychologist walk into a bar . . .
Not really
But if we did . . .
Why People Help, Why They Don’t
and What To Do About It
Research Update
I. “bystander-effect”
Presence of others inhibits helping
Others don’t have to be ‘present’**
Can be a blessing - as well as a curse
II. Identify motivational & situational factors
III. Implications for designing programs
Prosocial actions intended to benefit others
Intervening in emergency situations
Helping; altruism
Empathy, sympathy, kindness
Support, inclusion
Sharing, charity, donating
Antisocial actions intended to harm others
Stigmatization, exclusion, rejection
Maltreatment (inflicting punishment, distress)
Aggressive behavior
hostile or instrumental
overt & relational
Harmful Inaction – intended or otherwise
icebreaker
Nonconscious cues
Shared and Nonshared Social Goals
A 2012 meta-analysis of the social goals &
aggression of children (18 & younger)
revealed a “fit”
The Big
WE
versus bystander effect
Classic “Helping Behavior” Paradigms:
Naïve participants
alone OR
presence of
others
- others may
be
naïve
OR
confederates
(passive)
“emergency”
Results for the ‘smoke-filled room’ experiment
Piliavin, Rodin, & Piliavin, (1969)
Figure 1: Layout of adjacent and critical areas of subway car
Conclusions from Early
Bystander Studies
• Bystanders inhibit helping
– Diffusion of responsibility
– Pluralistic ignorance
– Evaluation apprehension
• Implication for intervention programs
based on increasing bystander
responsiveness
Recent re-analysis of the bystander effect -bystanders may be (some of) your best friends
But only in the most dangerous situations
– which few researchers have put to the test
Disney
ABC News: What Would You Do?
Host: John Quinones
WWYD Scenario:
Abuse of Homeless People
3 key features related to college life:
victim: outcast (stigmatized)
“campus”
emergency = hostile aggression
Prediction (according to the bystander effect):
See ABC’s WWYD on the abuse of homeless people
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWNQ5zbKw-Q
elements
elements
Empathy/sympathy
arousal
Ease of escape
Cost of
not
helping
(guilt,
shame)
Ability,
expertise
Perceived threat
Responsibility
& duty
Helper’s High
pride, positive affect
community
humanization
norms
Group
action/peer
support
disgust, anger
Collective action more likely when
• Bystanders are friends
& danger is clearly evident
• Psychological mechanisms:
Adult men, alone or in groups,
matched the face of a terrorist
with a body, estimating
muscularity & other traits.
Fessler & Holbrook, 2013, Psyc Sci
Sadly, a race bias persists
Individual Whites are quicker to
come to the aid of White than Black
victims even in high emergency
situations
Individual Blacks = aid Blacks and Whites
From: Kuntsman & Plant (2008). Racing to help: Racial bias in high
emergency situations. JPSP, 95.
Fiske (2011). Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us
Can contact with ‘outgroup’ members
prosocial behavior?
• Koschate et al., (2012) studied workgroups
in organizations
• Assessed task and personal contacts
• Assessed prosocial behavior & empathy
directed toward outgroup generally
directed toward individuals from outgroup
Results
Personal contact increased empathy & help
for outgroup individuals
Task contact increased expected rewards (&
reduced costs) for helping & more help for the
outgroup as a whole
Applied to campus . . .
WWYD Hazing Scenario:
attitudes toward the victim
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMR7t_A55hk
elements
elements
disgust
Sympathy
for victim?
Moral
outrage
WWYD version of Jersey Shore . . .
WWYD:
The Drugged Drink Scenario
Youtube links for WWYD parts I and II of drugged drink scenario
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue_fGd32Ewo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u716oysCtyI
elements
elements
Anger
Concern
Relief
Evaluation
apprehension
Established
bond with
abusive agent
“America”
Presence
of likeminded
others
Attitude toward
target
Appearance
of target
Presence of like-minded others
• Empowers
• Blinds in 2 ways
example: political attitudes
(J. Keating, 2013)
Example: enclaves on campus
• Men express less
willingness to aid a
female sexual
assault victim after
being embedded in
an all male group.
• Women express less
willingness to aid a
female sexual
assault victim after
being singly
embedded in a group
of males; they
express more
willingness after
being embedded in a
group of females.
The mere knowledge that similar others share
your goal intensifies goal pursuit
Two experiments:
• UGs played a game
independently; instructed
to either
Study 1: get points
Study 2: avoid mistakes
“Similar” others ‘chose’ the
same color avatar (minimal
group paradigm)
Results:
• UGs achieved more points
(or avoided more
mistakes) IF they knew
that similar others shared
their goal.
• Knowing that others share
your goal stimulates
pursuit; no collaborative
effort necessary!
Putting the
elements
together
Potential solutions: Easy to identify;
challenging to implement
The problem
Potential solution
• Foster the Big We
• Shared social goals*
-campus-wide projects
Virginia Tech example
• Identity salience/large group
- Off-campus opportunities
BOB, the bus
• Promote liking among
dissimilar individuals*
-The Ba
Potential solutions: Easy to identify;
challenging to implement
The problem
Potential solutions
• Foster SelfAwareness
• Exposure to individuating
experiences (reduce
enclavement)
(reinforce The Self)
• Prime the right self
• Reduce social comparison
• Meditation/Mindfulness
Potential solutions: Easy to identify;
challenging to implement
The problem
Potential solutions
• Make it easy to
intervene
• Create a culture of
interveners
- moral peers
• Model intervention
WWYD (use media
power)
Thank you!
• Colgate’s counseling center
• Tech support
Wonderful audience –
a hand for the volunteers!