IB Docs (2) Team
Drury et al (2009)
Social Identity Theory has been applied to explain many different behaviours. In particular, it has been used to explain prosocial behaviour - that is, the willingness to help someone in need of help.
The study of helping behaviour is important as it helps us to better understand how people react in an emergency situation. However, it is not possible to carry out research in the field. Therefore, studies are often highly artificial and use deception which may have a negative effect on the participants.
Drury et al (2009) used virtual reality to investigate the role of SIT on helping.
A key component of Social Identity Theory is "social categorization theory" - that is, our natural tendency to identify with groups. Through social categorization, we identify with a group and have a sense of belonging. According to psychologists who have studied emergency situations, this sense of being part of a group may actually play a key role in one's likelihood of helping.
Levine et al (2005) carried out a study to see the effect of in-group bias on helping. The study was carried out on a group of 45 male students who were self-identified Manchester United fans. When arriving for the experiment, they were told that the experiment had to be moved to a larger room across campus. As they walked to the other room, a confederate ran down a grassy hill, slipped, and fell over, holding onto his ankle and shouting out in pain. The confederate was either wearing a Manchester United team shirt, a Liverpool FC team shirt, or a plain t-shirt.
The psychologists observed the following behaviour.
| Manchester United | Plain shirt | Liverpool | |
| No help | 1 | 8 | 7 |
| Help | 12 | 4 | 3 |
As you can see, the students were most likely to help another Manchester United fan - and were less likely to help a plain-shirt or Liverpool fan. The difference between the other two conditions is minimal, showing that it does not matter that they liked the arch-rival, Liverpool - it was more influential that the confederate was a member of their in-group.
The use of deception raises some ethical concerns, so Drury used modern technology to overcome them.
Drury et al (2009) used an independent samples design, in which participants either felt part of a group or as an individual. The sample was made up of 40 students from the University of Sussex with an age range of 20 to 25 years. Seven participants were male - the remainder was female.
The participants used a virtual reality simulator to experience an emergency in the London metro. In this situation, they would have to escape a fire. In order to do this, they could help people or push them out of their way as they tried to make it to safety.
Before starting the simulation, the participants were primed by thinking about an emergency situation. They were asked to read a news report about a fire in the King Cross metro where 31 people died. They were then asked to close their eyes and imagine the sights, noises, smells, and other sensations that would be associated with such a scenario.
The group-identification participants then were given the following scenario:
You have just been to an England football match at Wembley Stadium and are now on your way back to Brighton as you have university in the morning. You and the other England supporters are making your way through the local rail station to the Underground, from where you can get the train back home.
You are just about to board the underground train when you hear someone shout “There’s a fire, get out, get out!” You look behind you and see large flames at one end of the platform with people running away from the fire. Everybody around you looks scared, and you feel yourself starting to sweat and sense your heart pumping faster. The fire seems to be getting bigger rapidly and you start to choke on the smoke. You realize that you may only have a few minutes to get back up to ground level and away from the fire in order to survive.
The individual-identification condition participants were presented with the following:
You have spent a long day shopping in central London and are now on the way back to Brighton as you have university in the morning. You are making your way through the local rail station to the Underground, from where you can get the train back home.
The rest of the scenario was otherwise the same as that in the first condition.
To make sure that social identity was salient, in the group-identification situation, the "people" in the VR simulation wore vests of the same colour, but in the individual-identification, the vests were different colours. To also make sure that it was not simply the size of the crowd that affected the participants, in one condition there was a small crowd (8 other people) and in the other, it was a larger crowd (32 other people).
It was found that those participants with a high in-group identification gave more help and pushed others less than did those who did not have in-group identification. Crowd size did not affect the amount of help given.
The study has high internal validity, as it could control for extraneous variables.
The study had high mundane realism. Although it was "virtual," it still was highly realistic. However, it has low ecological validity because at no time did the participants actually feel that their lives were in danger.
The study is replicable, allowing us to test the reliability of the results. The study also appears to confirm the findings of Levine's research.
The study avoids causing undue stress or deceiving the participants; the study is highly ethical.
Drury, J., Cocking, C., Reicher, S. et al. (2009) Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: A new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model. Behavior Research Methods 41: 957. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.3.957
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