Non-Helping Behavior

Improved Essays
It comes as no surprise that the clothing we wear has a major influence on how others perceive us. There are valid reasons why we don’t typically sport sweatpants at job interviews or ripped jeans at funerals; generally, we tend to present ourselves in attire that is socially acceptable so that others are more likely to form positive impressions of us. In this experiment, we examine the effect that clothing has, not only on social perception, but also on social influence, particularly in regards to helping behavior. This study investigates the prospect that people in general may be more willing to help others based entirely on what color clothing the person in need is wearing. Research on the matter of color psychology holds relevance in that we can, potentially, use color to better communicate our intentions and persuade others in our daily lives. The conceptual independent variable in this experiment is the difference in attire between the first condition and the second condition. The conceptual dependent variable is whether or not participants exhibit prosocial, or helping behavior. Prior to performing the experiment, my partner and I hypothesized that participants would be more likely to donate their money to a person wearing bright clothing rather than dark clothing. We reasoned that someone clad in all-white might appear more friendly and approachable than someone wearing all-black, which might subliminally connote negative feelings. Pre-existing studies, such as those of Hemphill (1996) and Valdez and Mehrabian (1994) provide evidence which supports this hypothesis; namely, there appears to be a positive relationship between the brightness of colors and the amiability of participants’ behavior. Method To conduct the experiment, my partner and I stood outside of the Mayer Campus Center on October 13, 2016 between the hours of 1:30pm and 3:30pm and asked random passersby if they were interested in donating to the American Cancer Society. In order to ensure that we obtained a random sample, we approached every fifth person that walked by and did not address anyone else. The design of our study required that ten participants were randomly assigned to each condition; thus, a total of twenty participants were involved in the study. The population consisted of mostly, if not entirely, students of Tufts University, which indicates that there are limitations regarding how far the data may be generalized. In other words, external validity is low. The tendency of helping behavior amongst students at Tufts is not necessarily applicable to a broader population, such as …show more content…
Still, if they chose not to or were unable to donate money, this was considered “non-helping behavior.” Participants that did choose to donate money were considered to have exhibited “helping behavior.” Regardless of whether participants opted to donate money or not, we made sure to thank them for their time and/or contribution. It is crucial to note that the entirety of the proceeds that we collected, which totaled $7.22, was donated to the American Cancer Society following the conclusion of the experiment. We performed the first half of the experiment under the first condition, in which both my partner and I wore bright, white clothing when asking if participants were interested in donating to the American Cancer Society. Once we had obtained responses from ten random individuals under that first condition, we changed our clothing so that we were dressed in only black, and repeated the aforementioned procedure under this second

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