PSY 306 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Cognitive Dissonance, Ingroups And Outgroups, Fundamental Attribution Error
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10 Aug 2019
School
Department
Course
Professor
Class 17: Helping, Altruism, and Prosocial Behavior
Bystander
Apathy
Factors
Factors that Determine Helping
● Noticing something is wrong
● Deciding its an emergency (interpretation)
● Deciding one is personally responsible
● Deciding one is capable of helping
Latané and Darley (1970)
● The problem with bystanders
○ Presence of others undermines each of these factors because
we know we’re being seen by others
● Naive theory of helping doesn’t focus on these factors
Noticing
● Automatic vs. Controlled Processing
○ Most of the time we’re in automatic mode and it might not
occur to us that something is wrong or unusual
● Good Samaritans
Interpretation
● Informational influence: look to others to define the situation
○ “Where there’s smoke” study by Latané and Darley where
smoke starts to fill the room, how fast do people notice?
● After the experiment, those who had been alone most often
reported the smoke that made them think there was fire
○ Those with others reported thinking it was just smoke
● Didn’t think interpretation was biased by having others around
them
○ Interpreted the situation as safe because no one else reacted
● Letting others define the situation
● Pluralistic Ignorance: people mistakenly believe their own thoughts
and feelings are different from those around them
○ Even if they all behave the same
● When everyone in a group really thinks X is the case, but each
person believes that everyone but them really believes y and so
they keep their beliefs to themselves
○ “Stupid questions” effect in school
○ Kind of seems like an emergency, but…
○ Assume others would do something if it was a real
emergency, but they are scared and not acting