AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF HELPING BEHAVIOR

THE EFFECTS OF SITUATIONAL FACTORS ON BYSTANDER INTERVENTION

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate the effect of diffusion of responsibility on helping behavior in a non-emergency situation, and to investigate this effect in the bystanders' face-to-face (FF) and non-face-to-face (NFF) conditions. The proportion and the latency of helping were employed as the measures of helping behavior. The results showed that the proportion of helping did not decrease with the increase of the bystander group size. Especially, in the two-bystander-FF condition, facilitation of helping was observed on the contrary to the hypothesis about diffusion of responsibility. From these findings, it was suggested that diffusion of responsibility would be inhibited by the joint effect of the relative intensity of the psychological costs of helping and the difference in the bystanders' face-to-face rleations.