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CommitmentandtheResponsiveBystander-.docxPsychological Reports: Sociocultural Issues in Psychology
COMMITMENT AND THE RESPONSIVE BYSTANDER: A FIELD
EVALUATION WITH A LESS PROBLEMATIC REQUEST 1
NICOLAS GUÉGUEN
Université de Bretagne-Sud
Summary .— Prior research on the eff ect of commitment on bystander intervention has focused on situations involving crime (e.g., robbery). However, the eff ect
of commitment on less problematic situations has never been examined. In this
fi eld study, a female confederate asked (commitment condition) or did not ask (nocommitment condition) a customer to keep an eye on her grocery cart on the pretext
that she had forgotten something in the store. Several seconds later, a male confederate arrived behind the fi rst confederate's cart and began to move it in order to
take her place. It was found that participants ( N = 40) intervened to stop the second
confederate more frequently in the commitment condition. The results support the
assumption that bystander commitment infl uences behavior even in a non-crime
situation.
A host of experimental studies conducted in fi eld settings have examined ways of increasing individuals' intervention rates in emergencies
and dangerous situations (see Latané & Nida, 1981 ; Fischer, Krueger, Greitemeyer, Vogrincic, Kastenmüller, Frey, et al ., 2011 , for review). It has been
found that commitment increases intervention rates dramatically.
In the fi rst study on this topic, Moriarty (1975 ) demonstrated in two
fi eld experiments that bystanders were more ready to stop a theft if they
had previously committed themselves to the victim. In a fi eld experiment
conducted at a public beach, a fi rst confederate (the victim) placed a blanket near a participant and turned on a portable radio. After 2 min., the victim left his blanket and spoke to the participant. In one case (commitment),
the confederate asked the participant to watch his possessions because he
had to go up to the boardwalk for a few minutes, while in the no-commitment control condition, he took out a cigarette and asked the participant
for a light. The victim then strolled away in the direction of the boardwalk
and remained out of sight. One minute later, a second confederate (the
thief) walked up to the victim's blanket, then picked up the portable radio
and walked away in the opposite direction of the victim. The participant's
reaction to the theft was the dependent variable. In the commitment condition, 95% of the participants intervened when the theft occurred while only
20% in the control no-commitment condition did so. These results were
supported in a second study, where customers in a restaurant were asked
2014, 115, 2, 607-611.
1
Address correspondence to Nicolas Guéguen, Université de Bretagne-Sud, campus de Tohanic,
56000 Vannes, France or e-mail ( [email protected] ).
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or not asked by a female confederate to watch her suitcase. In this experiment, 100% of the participants intervened when the theft occurred, while
only 13% intervened in the control no-commitment condition. In both of
Moriarty's (1975 ) studies, the same pattern of results was found with male
and female participants and with male and female confederates.
The eff ect of commitment on reaction to a crime has been reported in
several studies ( Shaff er, Rogel, & Hendrick, 1975 ; Harris & Samerotte, 1976 ;
Stewart & Cannon, 1977 ; Schwarz, Jennings, Petrillo, & Kidd, 1980 ; Fischer,
et al ., 2011 ). In all of the studies, the percentage of participants who off ered
assistance at the time of the theft increased dramatically in the commitment
condition while the percentage of intervention was low in the no-commitment control condition. Interestingly, Shaff er, et al . (1975 , Experiment 1) reported that in a control role-play condition (where the scenario as well as
the actions of those involved in the real experiment were described to the
participants) no differences were found between the commitment and the
no-commitment group: in both conditions, a high percentage of interventions was reported. However, when a real experiment was conducted with
actual participants, it was found that the percentage of interventions was
low in the no-commitment condition while it was high in the commitment
condition. These latter results suggest that exploring the effect of real behaviors is necessary when examining the eff ect of commitment in a problematic situation.
The objective of the present experiment was to evaluate the effect of
commitment on a less problematic request. Indeed, prior research has focused on situations involving crime (e.g., robbery), but the effect of commitment on non-crime related situations has not been examined. The purpose of the experiment was to extend the research of commitment and
helping behavior to a non-crime situation. In this study, a female confederate asked (commitment condition) or did not ask (control no-commitment condition) a customer to keep an eye on her grocery cart. Several
seconds later, a male confederate arrived and began to move the female
confederate's cart. The reaction of the participants was examined.
Hypothesis . Participants in the commitment condition should be
more likely to intervene than participants in the no-commitment condition.
METHOD
Participants
The participants were 40 hypermarket (e.g., Costco, Sam's Club) customers (20 men, 20 women) randomly assigned to two groups. Based on
the huge eff ect size expected, the sample size was limited to 20 individuals (10 men, 10 women) as in Moriarty's (1975 ) study. They were all tested
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RESPONSIVE BYSTANDER 609
while waiting at the checkout of a hypermarket located in a medium-sized
city (about 75,000 inhabitants) on the West Atlantic coast in France.
Procedure
A 20-year-old woman acted as the fi rst confederate in this study and a
20-year-old man acted as the second confederate. The female confederate
pushed a grocery cart and waited until she saw several customers waiting
at a checkout. She was instructed to take the fi rst line she saw in the store
where at least a minimum of three customers and a maximum of fi ve customers were waiting. She got in the line and waited for 15 sec. In the commitment condition, she was instructed to look at the customer directly in
front of her and say, “I forgot something. Could you please keep an eye
on my cart?” and then she hurried off to get what she needed in the back
of the store. In the no-commitment condition, she just looked at the customer and said that she had forgotten something, and then acted as she
did in the commitment condition. Twenty seconds later, the second confederate, who was blind to the experimental condition, arrived and got
in the line just behind the fi rst confederate's grocery cart. He then began
to look around him and after 15 sec., he began to move the fi rst confederate's cart in order to take her place just behind the participant. At this time
the participant's behavior was assessed. If the participant said nothing,
the behavior was qualifi ed as a non-intervention behavior. The behavior
was qualifi ed as an intervention behavior if the participant (1) said that
the fi rst confederate would return soon, (2) if the participant said that the
place was occupied, or (3) if the participant intervened physically to stop
the confederate. No further behavior was reported (e.g., participant calling a manager, leaving the area, or asking another customer for help). To
avoid possible variations in the confederates' behavior based on the experimental conditions, the confederates were not informed of the experimental hypothesis. Each confederate tested 10 customers (fi ve in the commitment condition and fi ve in the non-commitment condition) one day
before the experiment to learn how to proceed with the participants and
to verify that the second confederate correctly coded the participants' behavior.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A 2 (sex of participant) × 2 (behavior of confederate) log-linear analysis using the behavior of the participants as the dependent variable was
performed. Neither the main eff ect of the sex of the participant [χ2
(1) = 0.33,
p = .57, r = .09] nor the interaction eff ect between the sex of the participant
and experimental condition [χ2
(1) = 0.23, p = .63, r = .09] was statistically
signifi cant. However, the main eff ect of the experimental condition was
statistically signifi cant [χ2
(1) = 34.63, p < .001, r = .93]. It was found that 95%
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of the participants (19/20) intervened in the commitment condition and
only 10% (2/20) intervened in the no-commitment condition (10%).
Congruent with previous studies examining the eff ect of commitment on bystander intervention ( Moriarty, 1975 ; Shaff er, et al ., 1975 ; Harris & Samerotte, 1976 ; Stewart & Cannon, 1977 ; Schwarz, et al ., 1980 ), it
was found that commitment dramatically increased the participant's behavior. The eff ect size of the experimental condition was very large ( r = .93)
and supported the generalization of commitment on bystander intervention in a further helping situation. In previous studies, reaction to a crime
was observed, whereas this was clearly not the case here. In this experiment, there was no risk for the confederate's property: the only unpleasant
consequence for the fi rst confederate was that she would simply lose her
place at the checkout. However, the percentage of intervention was close to
that observed in studies where a theft was committed. Such similar results
suggest that commitment probably increased responsibility and vigilance
toward all the events that could happen to the requester. This study was
conducted in France and extends the external validity of earlier studies
conducted in the United States, and suggests that commitment is a powerful method to infl uence community-oriented behaviors and our daily prosocial behaviors.
This study has some limitations. Only a woman acted as the fi rst confederate in this study, and previous studies reported that female confederates receive more help than men ( Latané & Dabbs, 1975 ; Juni & Roth, 1981 ;
Eagly, 1986 ). This study only examined the behavior of the participants but
it could be interesting in a future study to interview the participants after
the study to see why they did or did not intervene in the situation. Finally,
this study did not control the physical attractiveness of the two confederates, and a future study should examine this eff ect given that it was reported that the attractiveness of an individual is related to the helping behavior he/she receives from others ( Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo,
1991 ).
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RESPONSIVE BYSTANDER 611
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Accepted July 21 , 2014
September, 2019
