This article was downloaded by: [Costanza Scaffidi Abbate] On: 29 July 2013, At: 06:31 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Journal of Social Psychology Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vsoc20 The Effect of Prosocial Priming in the Presence of Bystanders Costanza Scaffidi Abbate a b, Stefano Ruggieri b & Stefano Boca a a University of Palermo b Euro-Mediterranean Institute of Science and Technology, Palermo Accepted author version posted online: 29 Apr 2013.Published online: 26 Jul 2013. To cite this article: Costanza Scaffidi Abbate, Stefano Ruggieri & Stefano Boca (2013) The Effect of Prosocial Priming in the Presence of Bystanders, The Journal of Social Psychology, 153:5, 619-622, DOI: 10.1080/00224545.2013.791658 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2013.791658 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content ) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
The Journal of Social Psychology, 2013, 153(5), 619 622 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC CURRENT PROBLEMS AND RESOLUTIONS The Effect of Prosocial Priming in the Presence of Bystanders COSTANZA SCAFFIDI ABBATE University of Palermo STEFANO RUGGIERI University of Palermo Euro-Mediterranean Institute of Science and Technology, Palermo STEFANO BOCA University of Palermo ABSTRACT. This study investigated the influence of priming and bystander apathy on helping behavior. After priming prosociality through a scrambled sentences test, participants encountered a woman who dropped the books she was carrying. Helping behavior in bystander and no-bystander conditions was tested. The results showed that people in a prosocial-prime condition were more likely to help than people in a neutral-prime condition, and that the effect of priming persists even in the presence of bystanders. Keywords: bystander effect, priming, prosocial behavior THE LITERATURE ON THE AUTOMATICITY of social behavior indicates that priming a concept automatically activates related behavioral schemas (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). In the area of prosocial behavior, few studies have looked at the impact of priming on the helping response. Garcia, Weaver, Moskowitz, and Darley (2002) merged the priming paradigm with the bystander apathy literature and found that the bystander effect can be primed simply by imagining the presence of people. Pichon, Boccato, and Saroglou (2007) tested the Address correspondence to Stefano Ruggieri, University of Palermo, Department of Psychology, Viale delle Scienze, Edificio 15, Palermo 90128, Italy; stefano.ruggieri@ unipa.it (e-mail). 619
620 The Journal of Social Psychology impact of the priming of religious concepts on helping and found that prosocial tendencies were stronger when religious words had been primed. The purpose of our research was twofold. First, we explored the effect of priming on helping behavior within a scenario that could cause so-called bystander apathy (for a recent review, see Fischer, Krueger, Greitemeyer, Vogrincic, et al., 2011). We wondered whether the presence of bystanders would wipe out the priming effect. A second aim was assessing an actual helping behavior. In fact, most of the research on automaticity in the prosocial area essentially tested the impact of priming on helping intentions (Garcia et al., 2002; Pichon et al., 2007; Scaffidi & Ruggieri, 2008) with the exception of Macrae and Johnston (1998), which used a measure of actual helping behavior. But intended helping does not always result in actual helping (Abbate, Isgrò, Wicklund, & Boca, 2006). In addition, unlike most research on priming helping behavior, where participants were given the explicit goal to engage in the helping behavior (Garcia et al. 2002, Pichon et al. 2007), we measured a spontaneous behavior triggered by the priming. We hypothesized that participants in prosocial prime condition would be more likely to help than participants in neutral prime condition both with and without bystanders present. Method One hundred and twenty-six students (73 women, 53 men; mean age 24 years) participated individually in a 2 (prime: help or neutral) 2(bystanders: yes or not) between-subjects experiment. The priming manipulation took the form of a scrambled sentence test (Srull & Wyer, 1979). For each of the 30 items, the participants were asked to construct, as quickly as possible, sentences of four words in length from a set of five words presented in a scrambled order. Two versions of test were arranged to prime prosociality in an experimental condition, and no particular construct in the neutral condition. In the experimental condition, 15 of the 30 items contained words related to prosociality (i.e., to gift ); in the neutral condition, words unrelated to prosociality were used (i.e., piano ). After the participants completed the test, they were dismissed. While walking along the corridor, they encountered a 24-year-old woman (a confederate) who stumbled and dropped all of the 20 books she was carrying. For the bystander condition, at the same distance from the confederate who fell (five meters) a man and a woman who were each 20 years old were also present. For the no-bystander condition, no one was present. The dependent variable was whether participants helped the woman pick up the books. Results and Discussion A three-way frequency analysis was conducted on the participants help. A hierarchical, log-linear analysis revealed a main effect of prime, λ = 2.66,
Abbate, Ruggieri, & Boca 621 s.e. =.12, p =.04 and a main effect of bystander, λ =.34, s.e. =.12, p =.007. The three-way association prime bystander help was not significant, λ =.04, s.e. =.12, p =.70. The two-way significant associations were prime help, λ =.42, s.e. =.12, p =.001 and bystander help, λ =.38, s.e. =.12, p =.003. Finally, the two-way prime bystander association was not significant, λ =.21, s.e. =.12, p =.10. Tests of partial associations revealed a significant one-way goodness of fit association showing that participants did not help at equal rates, χ 2 (1, N = 126) = 31.87, p <.001. More participants did not help (74.6%) than did help (25.4%). A test of partial association showed that more participants in the prosocial priming condition (37.1% of the 70 participants) helped than participants in the neutral one (10.7% of the 56 participants), χ 2 (1, N = 126) = 14.81, p <.001. This effect emerged in the absence of a bystander (62.5% vs. 25%), χ 2 (1, N = 32) = 4.57, p =.033 1, but also in the presence of a bystander (29.6% vs. 5%), χ 2 (1, N = 94) = 9.01, p =.003. Results did not shown any gender differences, χ 2 (1, N = 126) =.36, p =.54. As expected, on the basis of the literature about the bystander effect, the presence of people diminished the helping rate (from 43% to 19% in bystander condition), but the group primed with helping-related words continued to give help even when other people were present. In placing our attention on spontaneous and actual helping behaviors, these data reveal not only the influence of priming on helping behavior; they also reveal that the prosocial priming effect is only partially weakened by the presence of bystanders. NOTE 1. In an earlier unpublished study using the same method as in the control group (nobystander condition), we found that the prosocial prime influenced participants to pick up books (51.5%) as compared to 18.2% for the neutral prime (χ 2 (1, N = 66)=8.08 p =.004). Therefore, we did not include as many participants in the current study s control group. AUTHOR NOTES Costanza Scaffidi Abbate is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, University of Palermo. Stefano Ruggieri is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, University of Palermo, and Euro-Mediterranean Institute of Science and Technology, Palermo. Stefano Boca is affiliated with the Department of Psychology, University of Palermo. REFERENCES Abbate, S. C., Isgrò, A., Wicklund, R. A., & Boca, S. (2006). A field experiment on perspective taking, helping, and self-awareness. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 28, 283 287. Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype priming on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 230 244.
622 The Journal of Social Psychology Fischer, P., Krueger, J. I., Greitemeyer, T., Vogrincic, C., Kastenmüller, A., Frey, D.,...Kainbacher, M. (2011). The bystander-effect: A meta-analytic review on bystander intervention in dangerous and non-dangerous emergencies. Psychological Bulletin, 137, 517 537. Garcia, S. M., Weaver, K., Moskowitz, G. B., & Darley, J. M. (2002). Crowded minds: The implicit bystander effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 843 853. Macrae, C. N., & Johnston, L. (1998). Help, I need somebody: Automatic action and inaction. Social Cognition, 16, 400 417. Pichon, I., Boccato, G., & Saroglou, V. (2007). Nonconscious influences of religion on prosociality: A priming study. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37, 1032 1045. Scaffidi Abbate, C., & Ruggieri, S. (2008). A beggar, self-awareness, and willingness to help. Current Psychology Letters: Behaviour, Brain, and Cognition, 24, 98 107. Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. Jr. (1979). The role of category accessibility in the interpretation of information about persons: Some determinants and implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1660 1667. Received November 23, 2012 Accepted March 25, 2013