In this study, the social role theory of gender and helping (Eagly & Crowley, 1986) was applied to understand gender differences in helping behavior. Relationships among criterion variables of time spent helping and help quality; and key predictors of problem severity, empathic tendency, anger, sympathy, closeness, causal controllability, coping, and self-efficacy were applied. Participants from a large community sample ( N = 1,004) described situations in which they helped a friend and completed questionnaires describing factors that influenced their actions. Recipients of the help also filled out similar questionnaires. It was found that across many problem settings women spend more time helping, give higher quality help, and feel more empathy and sympathy in response to their friends' problems. Further, the presence of anger toward a friend is associated with more time spent helping but a lower quality of help. In contrast, men rate their friends' problems as more controllablehlameworthy and experience more anger. Further, controllability has a greater influence on a number of help-related variables. For both men and women, self-efficacy and perception of problem severity are the greatest direct predictors of helping.Prosocial helmior-lielping others in need--has long been of interest to the general public and to scientific researchers. Although early studies deinonstrated a fairly consistent pattern of gender differences in which men often emerged as the inore Address correspondrnce and reprint requests to: Darren M. Gwrgr,

Clinical implications Individuals with a diagnosis of mental illness (schizophrenia or depression) are more likely to experience others as shaming than those diagnosed with a physical illness, irrespective of current levels of depression and proneness to shame. There is a specific association between external shame and depression in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, suggesting the need for interventions levelled both at the individual's illness appraisals, and at social stigma relating to schizophrenia. Limitations of the study The participant numbers were low in each group. The three groups could not be matched on all variables. No additional internalized-stigma measure was used.

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