Emotional adjustment of psychiatric patients following their unexpected discharge due to war: short- and long-term effects.
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Adaptation, Psychological↗
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Results for “Helping Behavior”
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Personality characteristics found among youthful female suicide attempters.
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Adolescent↗
Altruism in psychiatric patients: how socially concerned are the emotionally disturbed?
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Adult↗
Interpersonal processes and psychopathology among expectant and nonexpectant adolescent couples.
This study examined the interpersonal and psychological functioning of expectant and nonexpectant adolescent couples. Interpersonal processes were assessed using the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (L. S. Benjamin, 1974) and psychological functioning was assessed using the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents--Revised (W. Reich, 1991). Compared with their nonexpectant peers, expectant couples exhibited higher rates of negative interpersonal processes, including demand-withdraw behaviors and lower rates of positive interpersonal processes. Expectant males reported higher rates of behavior disorders, substance use disorders, and internalizing disorders than nonexpectant males. Higher rates of substance-use disorders mediated the effect of expectancy status on demand-withdraw behavior. Results help clarify the links between the psychological risks associated with adolescent pregnancy and the interpersonal functioning of young expectant couples.
Adolescent↗
Empathy and altruism.
The psychophysiological responses of 60 subjects were measured as they observed a performer play a roulette game. Half of the subjects were led to believe that they were similar to the performer in personality and values, and half were led to believe that they were dissimilar. Half of the subjects in each condition believed that the performer won money and experienced pain as he played the game, and half believed that he performed a cognitive and motor skill task. Subjects who observed a performer who ostensibly experienced pleasure and pain exhibited greater psychophysiological reactions than subjects who did not. Subjects who believed they were similar to the performer tended to react more strongly than subjects who believed they were different from him. Similar subjects also reported identifying most with the performer and feeling the worst while he waited to receive shocks. It was concluded that the similar subjects empathized most with the performer who appeared to experience pleasure and pain. When required to make a choice between helping themselves at a cost to the performer or helping the performer at a cost to themselves, the subjects who reacted most empathically behaved most altruistically. The results were interpreted as casting some light on century-old questions about the human capacity for altruism.
Adult↗
Bystander reactions to a violent theft: crime in Jerusalem.
Seventy-two male Israeli students were exposed to a violent crime in the course of a bogus discussion. Their awareness of other bystanders' lack of reaction to the emergency (social influence) and others' awareness of their actions (evaluation apprehension) were crossed in a 2 X 2 factorial design. An "alone" condition in which the subject was the only bystander controlled for the effects of others' mere presence (diffusion of responsibility). Helping was reduced by diffusion of responsibility and slowed by negative social influence but was increased by evaluation apprehension. Differences traceable to social influence appeared prior to those from the other processes. Implications of these findings for the measurement of helping and the interpretation of bystander decision making are discussed.
Awareness↗
Emergencies: what are they and do they influence bystanders to intervene?
Social psychological research on helping has, in part, been concerned with the intervention of bystanders into emergencies. Pertinent empirical literature does not seem to be available on what factors bystanders use to define an emergency nor the effect of such a decision on the rate of helping. A series of four studies was conducted to answer these questions. We found that (a) Emergencies are a subclass of problem situation that usually result from accidents; (b) there is a high degree of agreement concerning what problem situations are definitely an emergency; (c) emergency situations are differentiated from other problem situations by threat of harm or actual harm worsening with time, unavailability of an easy solution to the problem, and necessity of obtaining outside help to solve the problem; (d) disagreement on whether a problem situation is an emergency or not results from differing perceptions of the degree to which threat of harm or actual harm worsens with time; (e) bystanders are more likely to help in emergency than in nonemergency problem situations. The results were interpreted as indicating that the need of the victim is a salient feature used by bystanders in determining whether or not to help.
Attitude↗
Bystander anonymity and reactions to emergencies.
The impact of anonymity on bystander reactions to emergencies and on the timing of bystander decision-making was investigated in two laboratory experiments. The experiments differed in the nature of the emergency developed from relative ambiguity to unequivocal clarity concerning the victim's need for help. In both experiments, an additional bystander's awareness of the emergency and the subject's anonymity were crossed in a 2 X 2 factorial design. Anonymity vis-à-vis the victim had no effects on helping. Anonymity vis-à-vis the other bystander did affect helping, apparently by reducing evaluation apprehension. Whether evaluation apprehension enhances or inhibits helping depends on the expectations attributed to other bystanders. Anonymity may also inhibit helping by reducing involvement. The timing of effects suggests that when emergencies are ambiguous, anonymity (through reduced involvement) delays making the decision regarding whether help is appropriate. Once emergencies are clear, anonymity (through evaluation apprehension) influences the decision regarding one's own obligation to intervene.
Decision Making↗
Bystander response to arterial bleeding: helping skills, the decision-making process, and differentiating the helping response.
Using a mock injury involving arterial bleeding, we explored the impact of variables on two different decisions in the decision-making process leading to help. Expertise (Red Cross Training), ambiguity, and number of bystanders were manipulated in a 2 X 2 X 2 design. We observed the following responses: (a) nonhelp, (b) ineffective direct help, (c) indirect help, and (d) direct help. The decision to help or not was affected by ambiguity, sex, and the presence or absence of other bystanders. Greater ambiguity led to less help; women helped less than men; and fewer people helped when other bystanders were present. Expertise affected the decision leading to the type of help used but not the decision to help. Although training did not raise the intervention rate, it did dramatically change the effectiveness of the help used and could yield as many as 28 more saved lives out of 80 such incidents. The number of bystanders affected both the decision to help and the type of help used. Ineffective direct help occurred most frequently when the bystander was alone. The presence of other bystanders also affected the type of indirect help that was used.
Arteries↗
Effect of depression level and length of acquaintance on reactions of others to a request for help.
This experiment examined an interpersonal-process view of depression by assessing subjects' reactions to a request for help from a hypothetical depressed or nondepressed person with whom they had been acquainted for a relatively short (2 weeks) or long (1 year) period of time. Subjects responded to each of the four hypothetical persons by indicating their probable affective reactions to the request, the number of minutes they would be willing to help, their desire for future social contact with the hypothetical person, and their expectations of future requests for help. Requests from depressed persons elicited significantly more anger and social rejection but equal amounts of concern and willingness to help. This mixed response pattern was interpreted as providing partial support for an interpersonal-process view of depression. In addition a path analysis provided limited support for Coyne's (1976b) hypothesis that rejection of depressed persons results from the negative mood they induce in others.
Adult↗
Social evaluation and the empathy-altruism hypothesis.
Archer, Diaz-Loving, Gollwitzer, Davis, and Foushee (1981) suggested that feeling empathy for a person in need may lead to increased helping because the empathic individual wants to avoid negative social evaluation. As support for this suggestion, they claimed that empathy leads to increased helping only under socially evaluative circumstances. We conducted two studies to test this claim. In Study 1 subjects were led to believe that no one--including the person in need--would ever know if they declined to help. In this situation, which was designed to be totally devoid of the potential for negative social evaluation for not helping, there was still a positive relationship between self-reported empathic emotion and offering help. In Study 2 empathy (low versus high) and social evaluation (low versus high) were manipulated in a 2 X 2 design. Once again there was a positive relationship between empathy and offering help when the potential for social evaluation was low as well as high. Results of both studies, then, suggest that the motivation to help evoked by empathy is not egoistic motivation to avoid negative social evaluation. Instead, the observed pattern was what would be expected if empathy evokes altruistic motivation to reduce the victim's need.
Adult↗
Keeping track of needs in communal and exchange relationships.
Keeping track of needs in communal and exchange relationships was investigated in two experiments. In both, subjects could check to see if another person needed help. The first experiment tested the hypotheses that When there is no opportunity for the other to reciprocate in kind, keeping track of the other's needs will be greater if the person desires a communal relationship with the other than if the person desires an exchange relationship with the other. If the person desires an exchange relationship with the other, keeping track of the other's needs will be greater when an opportunity for the other to reciprocate in kind exists than when it does not. If a communal relationship is desired, the existence of an opportunity for the other to reciprocate in kind will not influence keeping track of the other's needs. The results of the first experiment supported all three hypotheses. The second experiment tested and found support for the hypothesis that even when nothing can be done to help the other, keeping track of the other's needs will be greater if a communal relationship is desired with the other than if an exchange relationship is desired.
Dependency, Psychological↗
Social ties: subgroup differences in costs and benefits.
Social ties can be stressful as well as supportive. Are these opposing effects linked, and can they help explain subgroup differences in the efficacy of social support? These questions were applied to data on social support in response to stressful life events. The subjects were 314 women randomly chosen from the registration list of a neighborhood health center in Boston. The data were from the initial interviews of a larger study. The findings include the following: The mobilization of social support was associated with better psychological well-being for women with greater personal resources, but not for those with lower levels of personal resources. Women with lower levels of personal resources were more distressed by life events in the lives of their significant others, especially as the number of these events increased. The subgroup effects of interpersonal support and stress on psychological well-being were independent, separate effects. In sum, women with greater material and psychological resources derived more beneficial support and suffered less stress from their social ties.
Adaptation, Psychological↗
Empathy-based helping: is it selflessly or selfishly motivated?
A substantial body of evidence collected by Batson and his associates has advanced the idea that pure (i.e., selfless) altruism occurs under conditions of empathy for a needy other. An egoistic alternative account of this evidence was proposed and tested in our work. We hypothesized that an observer's heightened empathy for a sufferer brings with it increased personal sadness in the observer and that it is the egoistic desire to relieve the sadness, rather than the selfless desire to relieve the sufferer, that motivates helping. Two experiments contrasted predictions from the selfless and egoistic alternatives in the paradigm typically used by Batson and his associates. In the first, an emphatic orientation to a victim increased personal sadness, as expected. Furthermore, when sadness and empathic emotion were separated experimentally, helping was predicted by the levels of sadness subjects were experiencing but not by their empathy scores. In the second experiment, enhanced sadness was again associated with empathy for a victim. However, subjects who were led to perceive that their moods could not be altered through helping (because of the temporary action of a "mood-fixing" placebo drug) were not helpful, despite high levels of empathic emotion. The results were interpreted as providing support for an egoistically based interpretation of helping under conditions of high empathy.
Altruism↗
Recipient's mood, relationship type, and helping.
We conducted two studies to examine how a potential helper is affected by having a communal orientation toward a relationship with a potential recipient and by the potential recipient's sadness. We hypothesized that (a) having a communal orientation would increase helping and that (b) people high in communal orientation, but not others, would respond to a potential recipient's sadness by increasing helping. These hypotheses were tested in two studies. In Study 1, individual differences in communal orientation toward relationships were measured by using a new communal orientation scale reported for the first time in this article. In Study 2, manipulations were used to lead subjects to desire either a communal or an exchange relationship with another person. In both studies, subjects were exposed to a sad person or to a person in a neutral mood whom they were given a chance to help. As hypothesized, in both studies communally oriented subjects helped the other significantly more than did others. Also as hypothesized, in both studies communally oriented subjects but not others, increased helping in response to the other person's sadness although this effect reached statistical significance only in the second study.
Adult↗
Reactions of would-be helpers whose offer of help is spurned.
An experiment was conducted to test the proposition that rejection of help by a needy recipient constitutes a negative expectancy violation for the would-be helper. The helper will react to this self-threat by expressing negative affect, unfavorable evaluations of the recipient, low attraction to the recipient, and causal attributions for the rejection that cast the recipient in an unflattering light. To test these hypotheses, college freshmen were prompted to offer rules for word construction to a same-sex recipient (a confederate) who was described as needing remediation on vocabulary and who "failed" a practice task. After rejecting/accepting the help, the recipient failed or succeeded on a comparable task. The results were consistent with these predictions. Dispositionally high expectations of interpersonal success served to amplify helpers' reactions to rejection/acceptance.
Adult↗
Five studies testing two new egoistic alternatives to the empathy-altruism hypothesis.
The empathy-altruism hypothesis claims that prosocial motivation associated with feeling empathy for a person in need is directed toward the ultimate goal of benefiting that person, not toward some subtle form of self-benefit. We explored two new egoistic alternatives to this hypothesis. The empathy-specific reward hypothesis proposes that the prosocial motivation associated with empathy is directed toward the goal of obtaining social or self-rewards (i.e., praise, honor, and pride). The empathy-specific punishment hypothesis proposes that this motivation is directed toward the goal of avoiding social or self-punishments (i.e., censure, guilt, and shame). Study 1 provided an initial test of the empathy-specific reward hypothesis. Studies 2 through 4 used three procedures to test the empathy-specific punishment hypothesis. In Study 5, a Stroop procedure was used to assess the role of reward-relevant, punishment-relevant, and victim-relevant cognitions in mediating the empathy-helping relationship. Results of these five studies did not support either the empathy-specific reward or the empathy-specific punishment hypothesis. Instead, results of each supported the empathy-altruism hypothesis. Evidence that empathic emotion evokes altruistic motivation continues to mount.
Adult↗
Providing help and desired relationship type as determinants of changes in moods and self-evaluations.
Observed in 2 initial studies was converging evidence that helping improves the helpers' moods and self-evaluations. In these studies Ss induced to help showed improved moods and self-evaluations relative to Ss not given an opportunity to help. A 3rd study examined the moderating effects of desired relationship type on reactions to having helped. In this study Ss were led to desire either a communal or an exchange relationship with another. They then helped the other or were not allowed to help. Among Ss led to desire a communal relationship, but not among those led to desire an exchange relationship, helping was associated with greater improvements in moods than not helping. Helping tended to improve self-evaluations regardless of desired relationship type. However, this effect reached statistical significance only among subjects led to desire a communal relationship.
Adolescent↗