Darley, J. M., & Batson, C. D. (1973). “From Jerusalem To Jericho”: A Study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(1) 100-108.
Arhe Vaninetti
Research Methods and Statistics, PSY301, Pacific University, Oregon
March 23, 2023
This study was conducted after the incident in New York where a woman was attacked by a man and no witness had the will to help her. The main consequence of this renowned attack was the impact that the bystander effect, as a concept, was the reason why Kitty Genovese was murdered in 1964. Due to this event, Darley & Batson aimed to understand whether religiosity and notions of being a good samaritan can affect whether someone succumbs to the bystander effect.
In this study, the researchers, Darley & Batson (1973), recruited 67 seminary (pre-ministry) students from Princeton University, who were mainly white males. The researchers could only retain 47 of the participants due to difficulties in contacting them. Each subject was paid $2.50 for participating in the initial questionnaire and the study itself (approximately $17.50 as of 2022).
The researchers presented the participants with three personality tests, the Religious Life
Inventory (that has many subscales) (RELI), the Allport-Ross extrinsic and intrinsic scale (AR), and the Doctrinal Orthodoxy measure (D-O). These scales and measures tested the individuals’ intent with religiosity, their attributions, and agreement with classical Protestant orthodoxies.
For the design of the experiment, the researchers chose to study the effects of good samaritan intent and level of time pressure on helping others. Specifically, the researchers created the following variables: participants giving a good samaritan talk; participants giving another kind of talk; participants who are in a hurry; and participants who are not in a hurry. With this 2 x 2 factorial design, the researchers aimed to test the effects between the variables.
The researchers assigned the participants randomly to one of four conditions: good samaritan/high time pressure, good samaritan/low time pressure, non-good samaritan/high time pressure, and non-good samaritan/low time pressure. To create a sense of ‘good samaritanism,’ the researcher asked the participants to deliver a talk to other students in a nearby building, either on being a good samaritan, or on another topic. To add the time pressure, the researchers either told the participants that they needed to hurry, or had plenty of time.
On the way there, the researchers planted a confederate who was slumped over in a location on the way to the building where the participants needed to have their talk. The confederate would cough and groan loudly when the participants passed by. The person was slumped over in three locations of differing navigability: an alley (difficult), a busy street (moderate), or a large open area (easy).
The dependent variable was whether or not the participant stopped to help the confederate. The researchers observed the participants’ intentions to help, and how long it took them to reach their destination to deliver the talk. Once the participants reached the building, they were debriefed and informed about the purpose of the study. Additionally, the researchers allowed the participants to choose to withdraw their data from the study if they were uncomfortable.
The investigators found, overall, that no certain factor influenced whether or not the participants would stop to help the confederate. This study could be improved in two ways: with happenstance confounds, and by gender effects. The researchers had no way to confirm that the participants had not seen the confederate and/or conditions before, as it was in a public place in the city. Secondly, using a woman as the confederate, or a child, would create more broad implications about the bystander effect and intentions to help.