Levine

Question 1

Define purchasing power parity.

Answer 1

How much the average income within the country could buy.

Question 2

Define simpatia.

Answer 2

Cultures that see being friendly, nice, agreeable and good-natured as more important than achievement and productivity.

Question 3

What was the background to Levine’s study?

Answer 3

• Almost all studies investigating differences between communities in helping behaviour have focused on the variable of population size, most often testing the hypotheses that the tendency to help strangers declines as the size of the city increases. However, population size is only one of the many qualities that differentiate cities from each other.
• Previous studies investigating helping behaviour using identical procedures have done this is a maximum of three different countries.

Question 4

What were the aims of Levine’s study?

Answer 4

• To see if helping strangers varies between cultures.
• To see if helping strangers is a characteristic of a culture that is stable across different helping situations.
• To investigate characteristics of communities that might be related to helping strangers.

Question 5

What was the sample in Levine’s study?

Answer 5

• 23 different countries.
• Either the country’s largest city or another major city.
• Both men and women.
• Did not include children or those who may not be able to help e.g. very old, physically disabled, carrying heavy packages etc…

Question 6

What were the rejected tasks in Levine’s study and why could they not be used?

Answer 6

• Asking for change: There was a general shortage of small-value coins and notes in Calcutta.
• Seeing how many apparently mislaid letters would be picked up and posted on: Residents of Tel Aviv were afraid to touch them for fear they might contain explosives as well as a general absence of post boxes in less developed countries.

Question 7

What was the procedure in Levine’s study?

Answer 7

• All experimenters were male, college age, and dressed neatly and casually.
• In city centres on clear days during main business hour, they would:
  
  • Drop a pen whilst walking along (done over 400 times).
  • Drop a pile of magazines whilst walking with a heavy limp and wearing a large and clearly visible leg brace (done nearly 500 times).
  • Act like a blind person needing help to cross the road (done nearly 300 times).

Question 8

In the dropped pen scenario, what was recorded as helping behaviour in Levine’s study?

Answer 8

Calling back to the experimenter that he had dropped his pen and / or picking the pen up and taking it to him.

Question 9

In the leg brace scenario, what was recorded as helping behaviour in Levine’s study?

Answer 9

Offering to help and / or beginning to help without offering.

Question 10

In the blind person scenario, what was recorded as helping behaviour in Levine’s study?

Answer 10

At a minimum, informing the experimenter that the pedestrian lights had gone green.

Question 11

What were some key results from Levine’s study?

[Think about the most and least helpful cities.]

Answer 11

• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was the most helpful city with an overall helping index of 93%.
• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia was the least helpful city with an overall helping index of 40%.

Question 12

What conclusions were made with regard to community variables in Levine’s study?

Answer 12

• They analysed the findings to see whether there was any correlation between helping behaviour and population size of the city, purchasing power parity, where the country would sit on a 10 point scale from the most collectivist (1) to the most individualistic (10) and the pace of life (measured by average walking speed of people in the city centre).
• The only statistically significant relationship found was a negative relationship between helping behaviour and purchasing power parity.

Question 13

What conclusions were made with regard to gender in Levine’s study?

Answer 13

No statistically significant differences were found between males and females in the proportion of individuals offering help.

Question 14

What conclusions were made with regard to the stability of the characteristic of helping strangers in Levine’s study?

Answer 14

It was relatively stable across all three measurements of helping behaviour.

Question 15

What type of culture were, on average, more helpful in Levine’s study?

Answer 15

Simpatia cultures