Social Factors in Prosocial Behaviour (AQA GCSE Psychology)

• Social factors are any external environmental stimuli which could influence someone’s behaviour e.g. the presence of other people, geographical location, time of day etc.
• The presence of other people has been found to affect the type and degree of help offered to someone in need
  • Helping someone in need is an example of prosocial behaviour
• It is logical to assume that when there is a large number of people at the site of an emergency e.g. someone being attacked or someone who has collapsed in the street, then help is more likely to be given 
• Research has shown that help is less likely to be given to someone in need when the number of bystanders is high
  • Help is more likely to be given when there is only one bystander present at the scene
  • This is called the bystander effect
• Latane & Darley (1968) conducted a study using naive participants
  • As the participants sat in a room the researchers pumped (fake) smoke into the room to simulate there being a fire in the building
  • 75% of the participants who were in the room alone left and reported the smoke
  • Whereas when participants were in a group with two confederates only 10% reported the smoke
• The research cited above demonstrates that when people are in a group they are more likely to do nothing as they either look to others in the group for guidance as to how to act or they feel that ‘someone else will help, it’s not up to me’ 
• When a bystander does nothing to help another person this is known as bystander apathy

Bystander apathy diagram

Bystander apathy and the costs of helping.

• There are specific costs associated with helping someone in need, which can be broken down into:
  • The costs of helping
    • You may be late for work/an appointment
    • People may think you are overreacting
    • It may not be a real emergency which is likely to make you feel embarrassed
    • The victim may attack you or be unpleasant to be near
    • You may have to go out of your way to help e.g. by accompanying the victim to hospital/asking others to help too/getting involved with police, ambulance etc.
  • The costs of not helping:
    • You may feel guilty that you did nothing
    • Others may judge you for not helping (social disapproval)
    • The victim may become very unwell or even die if they receive no help
    • It may negatively impact your self-image and lead to you becoming depressed e.g. ‘Am I really the sort of person who could just walk on by and leave that poor person to suffer?’
• Darley & Batson (1973) conducted a study with naive participants who were training to be priests
  • When some of the participants were told to get to a building across town and not be late only 10% of them stopped to help a man in need
  • Compared to 63% in the ‘low hurry’ condition
  • Thus even ‘good’ people can be bystanders when the social factor of ‘be on time’ is introduced as a condition

Evaluation of social factors in prosocial behaviour

Strengths

• Research (particularly in the 1960s and 70s) gives good support for bystander apathy
• Understanding bystander apathy is useful when applied to real-world situations/events e.g. evacuating people when a building is on fire, targeted ad campaigns to raise awareness of the positive aspects of prosocial behaviour 

Weaknesses 

• The theory of bystander apathy does not account for instances of helping behaviour which happen when many people are present 
• There are some ethical concerns with research into the bystander effect as such studies necessarily involve putting people into situations where they may feel stressed, nervous, alarmed etc.