Neuroscience
Tripping up in the street or dropping your things in a puddle. These are never happy events, but the outcome could be worse in some places than others. According to a new study in Social Influence, strangers are less likely to come to your assistance if they've just exited a luxury store, or even if you just happen to be in an exclusive part of town with lots of pricey shops.
Past research has already shown that reminders of money and materialism encourage us to be more selfish and less helpful, presumably because of the connotations of competition and self-sufficiency. But nearly all this evidence comes from lab studies and the findings haven't always held up to repeated testing.
The new research is a series of field studies. Students working for the researchers pretended that they needed help in a range of shopping locations across Paris including the avenue des Champs-Elysées, avenue Montaigne, the place Vendome, as well as nearby residential streets such as the rue de Marignan.
For example, in one study, the students walked with a crutch and leg brace, waited for an unsuspecting passer-by and then dropped their things. The test was whether the passerby would help. In another, the students worked in pairs, with one in a wheel-chair. In this case they asked unsuspecting passersby to keep the student in the wheelchair company while the other student went to look for a lost phone.
The consistent finding across the studies was that people were far less likely to help if they'd just been shopping in a luxury store or even if they just happened to be walking along a street with an abundance of luxury stores. For example, in the first study, 77.5 per cent of passersby were helpful on an ordinary street compared with 35 per cent of those who had just exited a luxury store. The second study showed the mere presence of nearby luxury shops reduced helping behaviour to 23.2 per cent (in this case, the passersby were just near the luxury shops, they hadn't necessarily been in them). And a final study confirmed that ordinary shops did not have this bad-Samaritan effect, only luxury ones did.
"Materialistic reminders may have increased self-enhancement and competitive values," the researchers said, "which in turn would decrease trusting and benevolent behaviour, and a sense of being concerned about and connected to other people."
--“Wrong place to get help”: A field experiment on luxury stores and helping behavior (image via flickr)
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Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
We're less likely to help each other out when near a luxury store
Past research has already shown that reminders of money and materialism encourage us to be more selfish and less helpful, presumably because of the connotations of competition and self-sufficiency. But nearly all this evidence comes from lab studies and the findings haven't always held up to repeated testing.
The new research is a series of field studies. Students working for the researchers pretended that they needed help in a range of shopping locations across Paris including the avenue des Champs-Elysées, avenue Montaigne, the place Vendome, as well as nearby residential streets such as the rue de Marignan.
For example, in one study, the students walked with a crutch and leg brace, waited for an unsuspecting passer-by and then dropped their things. The test was whether the passerby would help. In another, the students worked in pairs, with one in a wheel-chair. In this case they asked unsuspecting passersby to keep the student in the wheelchair company while the other student went to look for a lost phone.
The consistent finding across the studies was that people were far less likely to help if they'd just been shopping in a luxury store or even if they just happened to be walking along a street with an abundance of luxury stores. For example, in the first study, 77.5 per cent of passersby were helpful on an ordinary street compared with 35 per cent of those who had just exited a luxury store. The second study showed the mere presence of nearby luxury shops reduced helping behaviour to 23.2 per cent (in this case, the passersby were just near the luxury shops, they hadn't necessarily been in them). And a final study confirmed that ordinary shops did not have this bad-Samaritan effect, only luxury ones did.
"Materialistic reminders may have increased self-enhancement and competitive values," the researchers said, "which in turn would decrease trusting and benevolent behaviour, and a sense of being concerned about and connected to other people."
--“Wrong place to get help”: A field experiment on luxury stores and helping behavior (image via flickr)
_________________________________
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Our free weekly email will keep you up-to-date with all the psychology research we digest: Sign up!
- Following The Latest Psychology Research Just Got Really Easy
Introducing the Research Digest App for iOS and Android Today we've launched the free Research Digest app for Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, bringing you a new and convenient way to keep up-to-date with all our latest research reports....
- The Psychology Of First Impressions - Digested
Piercings convey low intelligence and greater creativity, according to researchYou’ll have had this experience - you meet a new person and within moments you feel good or bad vibes about them. This is you performing “thin slicing” - deducing information...
- Extras
10 eye-catching studies that didn't make the final cut: Watching your favourite TV shows restores your levels of self-control. Nearly one third of pedestrians were distracted by their phone when crossing the road. Extreme political views are often...
- No Room For Prejudice
Students’ racial prejudice is reduced when they share their university accommodation with roommates from a different ethnic group. Colette Van Laar at Leiden University in The Netherlands and her American colleagues measured the racial prejudice of...
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Speaking of marketing campaigns, neuromarketing is in the news [or at least, a scientific journal] again, along with other neuro words (more on that later). A recent fMRI study examined branding and the brain by showing participants pictures of logos...