Effects of participants' sex and targets' perceived need on supermarket helping behavior |
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Authors: | Regan Pamela C Gutierrez Delia M |
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Institution: | Department of Psychology, California State University, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032-8227, USA. pregan@calstatela.edu |
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Abstract: | A field experiment was focused on whether participants' sex and targets' perceived need influenced helping behavior. Confederates approached 332 (166 women, 166 men) same-sex participants in a supermarket and asked for 25 cents to help purchase one of three randomly assigned food items: milk which was defined as a high-need item, frozen cookie dough which served as a low-need item, or alcohol, which was a low-need item with negative social connotations. The dependent variable was whether a participant provided help. Participants' sex was not associated with helping behavior as equal proportions of men and women provided assistance to the confederate; however, perceived need strongly influenced whether the confederate received help. Specifically, the high-need item produced more helping behavior than did either of the low-need items, and the socially acceptable low-need item of cookie dough produced more helping behavior than the socially unacceptable low-need item of alcohol. This may be interpreted as showing that what one buys and how deserving of help one appears to be influence whether one is helped by others. |
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