Abstract
A field experiment using the “Lost Letter Technique” tested the hypothesis that altruism would be higher in small towns than in cities, unless the person needing help was a social deviant. The hypothesis was derived from Milgram's (1970) overload theory, in which city dwellers are expected to become generally indifferent to, and make fewer differentiations between, unimportant others. A total of 216 letters to one of three addressees (control, somewhat deviant, highly deviant) were “lost”, one‐half in Tulsa, Oklahoma (population: 347,600) and one‐half among 51 small, Oklahoma towns (× population: 2,002). Return rates supported the hypothesis. The data also suggest that a greater intolerance in small towns for social deviance might systematically overwhelm their generally higher levels of social responsibility. Implications are drawn regarding the danger of overgeneralizing negative attributions to urban centers.
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