Levine et al. (2001): Cross-cultural altruism

What you'll learn

• What Levine et al. (2001) investigated about helping strangers across cultures.
• How the study was conducted using three naturalistic field situations.
• The main findings about culture, economic productivity, and “simpatia”.
• How to evaluate the study and compare it with Piliavin et al. (1969).

The big picture: responses to people in need

Levine et al. (2001) is the contemporary core study for the OCR H567 theme Responses to people in need, within the Social area of psychology.

This theme asks a deceptively simple question: why do people help some strangers but not others? Earlier research, such as Piliavin et al. (1969), focused on helping in an emergency. Levine et al. widened the question by asking whether people in different cultures vary in everyday helpfulness.

Background to the study

Before Levine et al., many psychologists had studied bystander behaviour in Western settings, especially the USA. This created a problem: if most research uses one culture, we may wrongly assume the findings apply everywhere.

Levine et al. wanted to test whether helping strangers differs across cultures and whether these differences can be predicted by city-level factors.

The researchers considered several possible predictors:

• Population size: whether people in larger cities are less helpful.
• Economic productivity: how wealthy or economically developed a country is.
• Pace of life: how quickly people move through everyday urban spaces.
• Cultural values: especially individualism versus collectivism.
• Simpatia: a cultural value emphasising warmth, friendliness and concern for others, often associated with some Latin American cultures.

Aim of Levine et al. (2001)

The study aimed to investigate cross-cultural differences in helping strangers and to see whether those differences were related to features of the country or city.

More specifically, Levine et al. wanted to find out whether helping rates were linked to:

• city population size
• economic productivity
• walking speed as a measure of pace of life
• cultural values, especially simpatia

Method: how the study was designed

Levine et al. used a field experiment across 23 large cities around the world.

This was also a cross-cultural study, because the same helping situations were tested in different countries and cities.

The researchers used three helping tasks. These were designed to measure everyday, non-emergency helping towards strangers.

The three helping situations

1. Dropped pen task

An experimenter walked in front of a pedestrian and “accidentally” dropped a pen. The measure was whether the pedestrian helped by calling out, picking it up, or returning it.

2. Hurt leg task

An experimenter wore a visible leg brace and dropped magazines while appearing to struggle. The measure was whether the pedestrian helped pick up the magazines.

3. Helping a blind person task

An experimenter acted as a blind person, using dark glasses and a white cane, and waited near a crossing. The measure was whether a passer-by offered help crossing the street.

Sample

The participants were pedestrians in 23 cities across different countries. They did not volunteer; they were selected naturally as they passed through public spaces.

This means the study used an opportunity sample: the researchers used people who happened to be available in the right place at the right time.

The participants were not aware they were in a psychological study. This helped produce natural behaviour, but it also raises ethical issues.

Procedure

The procedure was carefully standardised so that the helping situations were as similar as possible across cities.

Researchers carried out the tasks in public urban areas, usually during normal daytime activity. Pedestrians were tested individually so the researchers could judge whether that person helped.

The key dependent variable was the helping rate: the percentage of people in each city who helped.

The study also compared helping rates with city or country-level variables, such as economic productivity and walking speed.

Results

The study found clear differences in helping across cities.

The highest overall helping rates were found in some Latin American cities, especially those associated with simpatia. Rio de Janeiro in Brazil was reported as one of the most helpful cities.

The lowest helping rates were found in some other urban settings, with Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia often cited as among the least helpful in this study.

The most important pattern was that economic productivity was negatively related to helping. In simpler terms, people in less economically productive countries tended to show more helping towards strangers.

Population size and pace of life were less successful as predictors than the researchers expected. Individualism versus collectivism also did not explain the findings as clearly as simpatia.

Conclusions

Levine et al. concluded that helping strangers is influenced by the wider social and cultural environment.

The study challenges the idea that altruism is simply a fixed personality trait. Instead, it suggests helping behaviour depends partly on cultural expectations, social norms, and perhaps the way people relate to strangers in public spaces.

The findings also suggest that Western psychological research cannot automatically be generalised to all cultures.

Evaluation: strengths

High ecological validity

The study took place in real streets and public spaces, not in a laboratory. Participants were unaware they were being observed, so their behaviour was likely to be natural.

This is a major strength because helping strangers is something that naturally happens — or does not happen — in public environments.

Standardised procedures

The same three helping tasks were used across many cities. This improves reliability because the researchers attempted to measure helping in a consistent way.

Useful real-world insight

The study is useful because it shows that social behaviour varies across cultures. This can help psychologists, charities, urban planners and international organisations understand how local norms may affect public helping.

Evaluation: weaknesses

Sampling bias

The sample was limited to pedestrians in large cities. This means the results may not represent rural communities or smaller towns within the same country.

A “Brazilian” helping rate based on Rio de Janeiro, for example, cannot represent every person or region in Brazil.

Problems with cross-cultural equivalence

The same task may not have the same meaning in every culture. For example, approaching a stranger at a crossing may be seen as polite in one place but intrusive in another.

Levine et al. tried to avoid ethnocentrism by using simple everyday tasks, but cultural interpretation is still an issue.

Lack of control over extraneous variables

Because this was a field study, the researchers could not control everything. Weather, crowd density, local traffic rules, crime concerns, or attitudes to strangers might all affect helping.

This lowers internal validity because differences between cities may be due to uncontrolled factors rather than the predictors measured.

Ethical issues

Participants did not give informed consent and were deceived because they did not know the situation was staged.

However, the tasks were brief, public, and low risk. The study also did not need to collect identifying personal information, which supports confidentiality and privacy.

Under the BPS Code of Human Research Ethics, the main issues are:

• Respect: lack of informed consent and limited right to withdraw.
• Responsibility: researchers needed to minimise distress or embarrassment.
• Integrity: deception should be justified by the study’s value.
• Competence: researchers needed training to carry out the tasks safely and consistently.

Comparing Levine et al. (2001) with Piliavin et al. (1969)

Levine et al. is paired with Piliavin, Rodin and Piliavin (1969), the classic subway Samaritan study.

Both studies are part of the key theme Responses to people in need, and both studied real helping behaviour in public settings.

Similarities

Both studies:

• used field settings with high ecological validity
• observed spontaneous helping towards strangers
• involved some deception because participants did not know they were in a study
• measured actual behaviour rather than self-reported attitudes

Differences

Piliavin et al. studied helping in a single urban setting, the New York subway. Levine et al. studied helping across 23 cities, making culture the central focus.

Piliavin et al. involved a more urgent situation: a victim collapsing on a train. Levine et al. used lower-risk everyday helping tasks, such as picking up a pen or helping with magazines.

Piliavin et al. focused on factors such as the victim’s appearance, race, whether he appeared drunk or ill, and the effect of a model helper. Levine et al. focused on broader cultural and social predictors.

Links to the Social area

The Social area studies how behaviour is influenced by other people and the social environment.

Levine et al. fits this area because helping is shaped by social norms, cultural expectations and public context. The study suggests that people’s behaviour towards strangers cannot be fully understood by looking only at individual personality.

Debates and wider issues

Nature versus nurture

Levine et al. supports the nurture side because helping behaviour appears to be influenced by cultural learning and social norms.

Individual versus situational explanations

The study supports situational and cultural explanations. A person’s likelihood of helping may depend on where they live and the norms of that environment.

Reductionism versus holism

The study could be seen as somewhat reductionist because it uses simple helping tasks to measure the complex idea of altruism. However, it is also relatively holistic because it considers broad social and cultural variables.

Psychology as a science

Levine et al. used systematic observation, standardised procedures and quantitative helping rates. This supports psychology as a science. However, uncontrolled field conditions make it harder to establish cause and effect.