Responsibility and Helping in an Emergency: Effects of Blame, Ability and Denial of Responsibility

The effects on helping of three variables presumed to influence feelings of responsibility among witnesses to an emergency were studied. Seventy-two male Israeli undergraduates who had completed the Responsibility Denial (RD) scale participated in a bogus study of training for heart rate control. They heard a female experimenter in an adjoining room scream in panic at the escape of a dangerous rat. The experimenter blamed the escape by implication on herself, chance or the subject. Earlier, subjects had received information about their ability to handle rats in a manipulation of relevant ability to relieve need. The following hypotheses were confirmed. (1) People help a victim they may have harmed: most if he implies they are to blame, less if he attributes his plight to chance, and still less if he blames himself. (2) Helping decreases the less the perceived relevant ability to help especially among those high in the individual tendency to deny responsibility (RD). (3) Helping varies directly with RD.