Dong+Myung,Jess

How do people’s helping behaviors differ in different societies? Do gender and location affect how much a person is willing to help the other person? Hypothesis When we conduct a test to see which gender is more likely to help a stranger, we think that women will be more likely to help than men. We think this way because we think that women are more likely to be afraid of the stranger. Most women are afraid when approached by a stranger and when a person is afraid of a stranger, he or she will try to do anything that the stranger needs in order to avoid conflicts. Also when the test is conducted where many people are present, we think that people will be less likely to help because they will think that other people will help. =Objective = Our objective of this research is to see whether gender and location affects how much a person is willing to help a stranger. There are times when people need help from others such as when a book was dropped. We wanted to conduct a test that would show if men are more likely to help than women, or vise versa. Also, we wanted to see if the location of the test changes the results. =Method = 1) Have hands full of books. 2) Walk by people and drop the books on purpose. 3) See if the people near by helps by picking up the books for us. 4) Make sure that the people around us notices that we need help. and (I think that we should maybe stick with just the second method because the top one has been done a few times before so the second one is a little different. Or, we could just tweak the first method a little bit and still have two methods. Up to you, I just think we should change it up just a little so that the teachers see something a little new! ) 1) Have hands full of books. 2) Walk by people and try to open a door. 3) See if the people near by helps by opening the door for us. 4) Make sure that the people around us notices that we need help.

=<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Potential Errors = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A potential error is that the gender of the experimenter is different. A woman might be more likely to help other men than women, which can be a potential error. Also, another potential error is that the person might not recognize that the experimenter needs help. Because people do not know that they are being tested, we will not be able to find out their ages. This might be a potential error because people in the same age group as us might be more willing to help than older people. =<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Literature Summary = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Dongmyung Lee **Woman left injured in busy road** September 29, 2004 [] It is inevitable that a person needs help from other people. Therefore, people ask for help when they need. However, when a stranger approaches for help, how willing are people to help? This article is about how a bleeding woman was left on the road and how drivers did not stop to help her out. A video clip has been taken in which an unconscious woman is laying down on the road, and cars just passing by even without trying to help the woman. This shows how willing a person is to help a stranger who really needs his or her help. Does this have to do with the culture of the people? Are people from one culture more likely to help strangers than people from different cultures? Behaviors can differ in different cultures, which shows that helping behaviors can be different in other cultures.

**Helping Behavior and Subway Musicians** Nicholas Herrera January 9, 2010 [] When we go on subways, we always see musician performing for money. If we think about it, how often do we stop to listen the music? Almost never. For the musicians, people on the subway help by listening to their music and making donations. This article talks about how barely anyone appreciates the music being played in subways. There was a well known violinist, Joshua Bell, playing classical music in the metro station. Only 7 people stopped and listened to his music during the 45 minutes of playing time. This shows how people do not “help” the musicians in the subway stations. However, does this have to do with the culture that the people are from? Are musicians in different countries more likely to be successful by playing in the subway stations? This is a question that still remains questioned.

**Kindness of strangers helps Elbridge family** February 26, 2012 [] There are times when people need serious help such as when there was a fire. People do not only get help from the people they know, but also from strangers. This article talks about how strangers helped the Elbridge family, who had lost their home due to a fire incident. Strangers helped the Elbridge family by donating money and letting them afford a house. People who are more kind are more willing to help out other people when they are in trouble. But does this come from the culture they are in? Are strangers more likely to help in those countries where natural disasters are frequent? Because more people are likely to lose their houses in places where natural disasters are frequent, does that make strangers in that country help out more?

Jess Creasey
 * Lit Review**

[] This article could help us with our experiment by giving us more to look at while performing the experiment. For example, when looking at gender, if a girl is struggling with a lot of books and a guy starts to help her before anyone else maybe that is a reflection on the way that guy feels about that girl etc. However, this article could also help us find any flaws in our experiment. For example, if someone is struggling with the books and someone we know for a fact doesn’t like that person, they probably won’t help them and that wouldn’t really be an accurate reflection on what our experiment is supposed to show. On the other hand, we may not know that those two people dislike each other and then when they don’t help each other, the fact that they don’t like each other could just be a possible conclusion. [] This article isn’t entirely about helping behaviors, but really sheds some light on how people even get the urge or sense to help. This article talks about teaching values and how there has been controversy about if the right things are getting taught to their children, or if certain important things are even being brought up to their kids. For example, helping behaviors and polite behaviors. I think that while this article doesn’t just talk about helping behaviors, that it does tell us a lot about how people are these days and kind of gives a possible explanation. Maybe once we start conducting our experiments and start to see results we can go back and think about what values they have been taught. I think that we will easily be able to tell which people have been taught how to be polite and which ones weren’t. If we start to struggle really bad while trying to open the door, taking a lot of time and effort, dropping books while trying, etc. and the person standing right there or walking by you doesn’t help you, we will obviously be able to tell that they haven’t been taught their manners very well. I can see how this is going into politeness over helpfulness, however, I think in this particular case they go hand in hand. This will be helpful in both the big picture question and our specific question with gender. [] This article is going to be VERY helpful in our project and experiment. This article talks about how gender roles are typically viewed and how those stereotypes are proven and how they are also sometimes incorrect. It also gives a lot of food for thought on how we perceive people and why we think the way we think about boys and girls sometimes. One thing this article mentions is that typically and most commonly found is that men help more than girls and girls get helped more than men. Something I found interesting was that they say that if a girl is in a relationship with the guy they are helping, or has had some kind of long term relationship with anyone (including friends) that they are more likely to help them as opposed to a stranger. This shocked me a little bit just because I had always thought it was the other way around. This will give us so much to consider and so much to think about while working on this project. This article goes into a lot of detail about how men and woman give and receive and how it compares and contrasts with each other, which is very helpful in this experiment because that’s essentially what it is. Reading this article will give us a lot of insight and should hopefully be able to help us make our project even better.
 * Effects of Future Dependence, Liking and Repeating Requests for Help on Helping Behavior**
 * Teaching Values**
 * Gender and Helping Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Social Psychological Literature**

Jess's results:
 * Ok so I dropped my books 46 times total, 23 at the library and 23 at the ISU campus. out of the 23 times I dropped the books at the library 13 times I was helped. 9 of those times it was girls who helped and the other 4 were boys and the rest I wasn’t helped at all. For ISU’s campus I again dropped the books 23 times and 11 times I was helped. 7 of those times it was girls that helped me and the other 4 were boys. The reason I didn't keep track of who did not help me is because I thought it would be too obvious to carry around a notebook and writing down a number every time a guy or a girl didn't help. I understand why you did keep track though. I do think that the experiment was still shown through what I did too, because you still see who helped guys vs. girls. ya know? **



Formal Report: (I didn't put the cover page on here because I didn't think you needed it, but if you want it let me know! Also, when i put this in here the graphs copied a little different but it's all there! )

Hypothesis: By conducting this experiment we are trying to see who helps the stranger more, the women or the men. We think that woman will be more likely to help than men because when confronted with a stranger we believe that woman try to give off a better impression of themselves and often times might even be a little worried when being confronted with a stranger that they will do whatever it takes to get a sense of approval. We also think that when we (the stranger) drop the books in front of a group of people, we will get less people to help us because everyone will think that someone else will help so they don’t have too. Therefore location is important so that we have a lot of people, both men and women.

Research Method: Our research method was going to two different locations and dropping books in front of people and seeing who helps. I went to the Normal Public Library and the ISU campus quad because I figured that the same age groups would be at both locations. The plan was to go to the locations and drop our books and see who would help us and whether they were a boy or a girl. We needed to drop them not only in front of groups of people but also in front of people who were by themselves in order to see whether or not our hypothesis about people not helping as much in a group is correct or not. This was the best research method because we could get many different results and be able to test it out on a lot of people because of the size of the locations. If we would’ve gone somewhere smaller we wouldn’t have been able to get a lot of results which may not give us a correct conclusion. If we would’ve tried going to a school and carrying books and seeing who helps us by opening the door it would’ve been harder to get results because there are tons of people who need the door held for them at all times of the day, especially during a passing period which is when we would’ve had to do it to get the most results anyway. This seemed like the best option so that we could get many results with lots of different people.

Data: -At ISU I was helped 11 times and 7 of those times were girls and 4 were boys. -At the library I was helped 13 times and 9 of those times were girls and 4 were boys.



Dong’s Data:

-21 people helped total and 6 of them were boys while the other 15 were girls.



-19 people didn’t help and 13 of them were boys and 6 of them were females.

Observations: While conducting this experiment I noticed that not only did girls help more, but also older people helped more. I was helped by many older people whether they were the librarians, professors, or just random pedestrians on campus. Sometimes, I was even helped by them when they were already preoccupied on the phone. I also noticed that people seemed to feel more willing to help if they were by themselves, even if they were listening to their iPod’s or on their phones. Another side note is that people are just rude! There were so many times I dropped my books around people and even if they had nothing in their hands, and not on their phones, they still wouldn’t help. If I walk by someone who dropped their books I always help, I was so surprised at how many people didn’t help!

Analysis: This experiment really surprised me. I went to both ISU’s campus quad and the Normal Public Library to drop my books around people anywhere from eighteen to fifty years old; however most were between the ages of eighteen and thirty. I dropped my books a total of twenty three times at both locations and was shocked with the results. At the Library I was only helped a total of thirteen times out of the twenty three times I dropped my books. Nine of those times I was helped by girls and the other four times I was helped by boys. On ISU’s campus I was only helped a total of eleven times out of the twenty three, four of those times boys helped me and the other seven times, girls helped me. In South Korea, Dongmyung dropped his books a total of forty times and was helped twenty one of those times, six of those times boys helped him and the other fifteen, the girls helped him. That leaves nineteen times that Dongmyung wasn’t helped. Of those times, thirteen of the people who didn’t help were boys and the other six boys. Our predictions were correct that more girls helped than boys, however I still thought that more people would help. I think that there is a lot of truth to our hypothesis because of the results we got. We had said that girls would help more because they felt more obligated to help strangers than guys were because we think that girls try harder to make first impressions etc. When people were walking with groups or sitting in groups most of the time no one helped. I think this is because people thought that someone else around would help so they didn’t have too, but when people were by themselves or with just one friend or so, they tended to help more. Age played a big role in this experiment as well. As I said before in my observations, I noticed that older people helped more than the younger people. I think this is a huge reflection on our manners now a days, the older people almost always helped. There was even a time when a professor was talking on his phone and he came over and helped me. Then you look at other people who were younger and weren’t listening to their iPod’s, weren’t on their phones, and didn’t have their hands full, and they still didn’t care enough to help. I was just amazed at people’s lack of manners. One of the articles I had read prior to our experiment said similar things that we said, and talked a lot about the manners of our generation versus our parents and grandparents generation. I used to think that it was a little absurd to say that teenagers have no manners and are losing them constantly, but now I see what he was talking about. There are still some teenagers who have been taught polite manners and put them to good use, however, I see a drastic slip as whole, and that needs to change. There was a little bit of miscommunication throughout our project such as where we were doing the experiment and how we were keeping track of our results. I was under the impression that we were doing our experiment at both a college campus, and somewhere else out in the public such as a library, so I did both, and Dongmyung went to just a library. There is no blame being put on just one person, we just should’ve communicated a little better! We also kept track of results different. Dongmyung kept track of how many people helped him when he dropped the books for both boys and girls and how many people didn’t help him both boys and girls. I however just kept track of how many times I was helped for both boys and girls and then how many times I wasn’t helped, but didn’t include whether or not it was a boy or a girl not helping me. The reason I didn’t keep track of how many boys and girls didn’t help me was because I thought it would’ve made it even more obvious by writing my observations down twice as much, and I thought that the results of who did help me was more important. I think that the results were still clearly represented in my research because I kept track of how many boys helped and how many girls helped. It still shows that more girls helped, and what the differences were and that boys didn’t help as much, plus observations. However, I see exactly what Dongmyung was trying to do as well. I believe that his results were clearly represented too and I can see how it would give more details to our project. Again, we should’ve just tried for a little bit more communication. I don’t think that there were many flaws though even with that. As I explained before, we picked the method we thought was best and it gave us great results and there wasn’t really a problem trying to get results. That being said, I think that our project, experiment, and results were all executed very well with good observations and results, with many people “surveyed”, and I think that overall we worked pretty well together and put together a nice project, even if the communication wasn’t one hundred present there!