Annotation Of Psych Article Essay, Research Paper

Emily W. Goldfrank

Assignment 3-3

11/14/00

Annotations

Wegner & Crano, 1975

Subjects consisted of 144 students, equally divided with respect to race and gender, from a large Midwestern university. Experimenters consisted of 12 college students, also equally divided with respect to race and gender. Each experimenter tested 3 of each race-gender combination. Experimenters approached individual naive subjects in the hallways of different building throughout the campus. Experimenters waited for an individual who met their specific race-gender specifications and then, seemingly engrossed in a decked of computer cards, waiting until the subject was about a step away, dropped their deck of cards. Whether or not the subject immediately assisted the experimenter was either scored as an instance of helping or not. The results of the study indicated that black people help other black people more, white people did not help either race more frequently, black people were helped more frequently by other black people, white people were helped more frequently by other white people, and that white males helped less frequently than black males or than white females. This study relates to our study on reactions to door holding in its examination of a different helping behavior and its examination of race and gender as variables. Additionally, this study takes into consideration both the race and gender of the experimenter as well as of the subject.