Social: Social Cognition and Teamwork - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 224

Fig. 8.2 This figure, which
appeared in a pre-game
(American football)
newspaper program, ran for
3 weeks (with different
opponents appropriately
inserted), with the labels
''When Penn State has the
Ball'' for its defensive team
and for its offensive team
The students who had the most time to get to the next building helped the most
(63%); those in the greatest hurry helped the least (10%). The students who were
somewhat late helped 45% of the time. Ironically, the amount of help they gave
was not influenced by whether the student was going to give a talk on the Good
Samaritan or not. This work starts to examine who chooses to participate, and
shows that it not only depends on the individual, but also on the context.
You can often see these effects in email. Some time ago we saw an email that
was sent out about the potential closing down of an academic society. ''Unless this
vote [to amend the constitution] is successful, the committee will [have] no
alternative [sic] to dismantling the Society, prior to closing it down.'' The email
called upon the members of the society to vote for a new set of bylaws. It was
targeted at the group (of society members) as a whole rather than individuals
within the group. (The society continued, but it took several more emails.)