Year: 1985
Type: article
Abstract: The effect of situational ambiguity on helping behavior was examined in relation to interpersonal relationship between bystanders in the field and laboratory settings. In Experiment I, 279 males and females waiting for buses either alone, with a stranger, or with an acquaintance witnessed a person looking for the appropriate bus stop for his destination. In the high ambiguity situation, he expressed a look of distress, but in the low ambiguity situation expressed distress openly by asking a passerby around him. In Experiment II, 120 undergraduates either alone, with a stranger, or with an acquaintance witnessed a person dropping his contact lens. There was another unresponsive subjects who seemingly knew the victim well (low ambiguity condition) or did not know him at all (high ambiguity condition). In both experiments, the effect of ambiguity on helping was most pronounced in the two-acquaintance condition. Subjects in the presence of an acquaintance were more helpful in the low ambiguity situation than were the subjects in the high ambiguity situation. These findings were interpreted in terms of the informational and the normative social influences of small-group processes.
Source: Japanese Psychological Research
Author: JUNJI HARADA
Institution: Nagasaki University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W1805005413