As a cyclist, there is often an unspoken sense of camaraderie with your fellow rider, such that if you see them stricken by the side of the road, it’s an unwritten rule that you always stop to make sure they’re ok.  Of course, a lot of this is driven by a degree of self-interest in that you would undoubtedly appreciate the same concern should you be stranded with a flat tire, but either way, it’s one of the more pleasing aspects of cycling.

So you can perhaps imagine my intrigue when I read a recent study that explored a similar scenario, but asked whether general members of the public would help said cyclist.  If those members of the public lacked the empathy of life on two wheels, would this influence their willingness to help?

Real-world altruism

The researchers conducted a candid camera type experiment, with two observers hidden in the crowd watching as a bike accident was staged.  The first of these was observing the passers by as they approached the scene and signalled to the second observer whether each passer by was eligible for the study (by being physically unimpaired and traveling on their own).

The second observer then noted what that passer by did when they encountered the stricken cyclist.  Whether they stopped to help the cyclist or not, the second observer asked each passer by to participate in an unrelated memory study that asked them to recall memorable aspects of their journey.

Of those who had agreed to participate in the study, some 29% of them had stopped to assist the cyclist (compared to a measly 7% of the total!).  When the researchers followed up with these altruistic souls afterwards, it emerged that they were much more likely to be empathetic than their unhelpful peers.

The authors suggest that their study is valuable purely because it occurred in the real world rather than in a lab environment.  As such, it hopefully attracted a more representative pool of participants than is often the case in psychology research.

“The implication of the present study is that within any institution (even perhaps extreme inhumane institutions such as those under the Nazi regime), there will be individual differences in how people within the institution respond, and that some of this variation in helping behaviour is accounted for by where on the empathy dimension the individual is situated,” the authors say.

Of course, the study does look at things through a particular lens, so it isn’t clear whether things may have been different if the cyclist in question was female, or a child.  Equally, I’m not sure it really accounts for the bystander effect, which may also have influenced the ratio of people that stop.

Given the apparently low levels of concern however, it does nonetheless provide an interesting contrast to the cycling community, where the ratio appears to be considerably higher.