| Abstract: | Abstract: A study was conducted to reconcile two conflicting models on the relationship of shame to helping. According to the negative-mood relief model, ashamed people try to help others to relieve a negative mood induced by a shameful experience. The self-esteem maintenance model suggests, however, that people whose self-esteem is threatened utilize helping behavior instrumentally to restore self-esteem. In the present study, 84 male subjects took an alleged intelligence test and received fictitious poor results, and in the next experimental stage, set up by a male experimenter who was not an observer of the subject's failure in the former stage, they were requested to help a person also unaware of subject's failure. On the basis of this paradigm for the shame-helping relation, the “ability” of the target person compared to the subject (superior vs. inferior) and the content of helping (meaningful vs. not meaningful) were manipulated. One level of each experimental variable was supposed to serve as an obstacle to maintaining self-esteem. Besides this 2 times 2 factorial design, subjects were classified as high or low in self-esteem; a control condition (with 16 subjects) was also included. The results provided unequivocal support for the self-esteem maintenance model: ashamed subjects were helpful only in the inferior-target/meaningful-help condition. This result did not interact with the relative levels of self-esteem; the lack of this interaction is explained in terms of self-esteem being trait. |
