Perceived sexual orientation and helping behaviour - The wrong number technique, a Swiss replication

A replication of Shaw, Borough, and Fink's and Gore, Tobiasen, and Kayson's nonreactive measure of homophobia ispresented. In the original study (Shaw et al,), residents of Los Angeles received an apparently wrong-number tele phone call from a male caller portraying himself as either homosexual or he terosexual. His car had broken down and he was out of change at a pay phone . Therefore, he asked the subject to call his boyfriend/girlfriend. Heteros exual callers received more help than homosexual callers. Gore et al. repli cated this study in Westchester County, New York, and extended it to female callers revealing comparable results. The repetition presented here took p lace in autumn 1999 in Bern, Switzerland. The results show that the Swiss s ubjects are significantly more helpful than the American subjects. The perc eived sexual orientation of the caller does not appear to influence the pro bability that help will be provided.