This study tested the effect of semantically induced thoughts of love on helping behavior. In a natural setting, 253 participants were interviewed and asked to retrieve the memory of a love episode or, in the control condition, a piece of music they loved. They then met another confederate who asked for money. Analysis showed that inducing the idea of love had a significant positive effect on compliance to a request by a male passerby who was asked for help by a female confederate, but not by a female passerby. Theoretical explanations are presented, based on a gender-role expectation hypothesis.

This study tested the effect of semantically-induced thoughts of love on chivalrous helping. A field setting of four hundred and one participants was divided into two groups. One group was interviewed and asked to retrieve the memory of a love episode, and the second group, the control group, was asked to retrieve a piece of music that they love. The two groups encountered another confederate, who inadvertently lost a stack of compact discs when they neared each other. The results demonstrated that participants were more helpful when they were male, when the person in need of help was female, and when they were induced to retrieve the memory of a love episode.Keywords Love . Helping behavior . Sex roles Much of the work on helping behavior has been conducted in laboratory settings, and thus its generalizability to the real world remains unsure. In addition, studies of sex differences and helping behaviors have given contradictory and inconclusive results. Men have been found to help more than women (Guéguen and FischerLokou 2004). Women have been found to help more than men (Bihm et al. 1979). Other studies have shown little or no sex difference (Boice and Goldman 1981; Monk-Turner et al. 2002). Further, individuals of both sexes have been found to help experimenters of the other sex more often than members of their own sex (Basow and Crawley 1982). Men have been found to help women more than men (Rabinowitz et al. 1997), and men have been found to help women more than women do (Wilson and Kennedy 2006). Women have been found to help women more than men do (Bihm et al. 1979). Women have also been found to help both Curr Psychol (

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This study tested, in a natural setting, the effect of mimicry on people's disposition toward helping others and the extent to which this helping behavior is extended to people not directly involved in the mimicry situation. In the main street of a busy town, men (n = 101) and women (n = 109) passersby were encountered and asked for directions. These passersby were subjected to mimicry by naïve confederates who mimicked either verbal behavior alone or verbal and nonverbal behaviors together, including arm, hand, and head movements. In the control condition, passersby were not mimicked. Following this first encounter, each subject was then met further down the street by a second confederate who asked for money. The results show that people who had been mimicked complied more often with a request for money and gave significantly more, suggesting they were more helpful and more generous toward other people, even complete strangers.

In a field setting, male passersby (N = 120) were asked by a female confederate to indicate the direction of Valentine Street (Martin Street in the control group). Thirty meters ahead, the participant encountered another female confederate who asked for help, claiming that a group of four disreputable-looking male confederates had taken her mobile telephone and refused to give it back. Participants primed with the cognition of “Valentine” helped the female confederate get her mobile phone back more frequently than those primed with the cognition of “Martin.” Results are explained in light of the gender role theory of helping, mood maintenance effects, and mood-elicited depth of information processing.

The “evoking freedom” technique is a verbal compliance procedure that solicits someone to comply with a request by simply telling them they are free to accept or to refuse the request. The measure of the efficiency of this technique on compliance with large samples and the evaluation of its influence on various requests was tested in the first set of experiments. This technique was found to be efficient in increasing the number of people who agreed to give money to a requester, the number of smokers who agreed to give a cigarette, passersby who agreed to respond to a survey, and homeowners who agreed to buy pancakes. In the second set of experiments in which the mode of interaction between the requester and the person solicited was tested, the “evoking freedom” technique was found to be associated with greater compliance with a request addressed by mail and through face‐to‐face, phone‐to‐phone, or computer‐mediated interaction. The third set of experiments tested the effect of semantic variations of the “evoking freedom” technique and the weight of the repetition of the semantic evocation of freedom. These later experiments that used various phrases evoking the freedom to comply were found to be associated with greater compliance. Moreover, a double evocation of freedom was associated with even greater compliance than a single evocation. The importance of this technique for commitment communication is discussed.

Although positive effect of touch on compliance has been widely reported, new evaluation was made with an unusual request. 80 male bus drivers were solicited by a male or a female confederate to take the bus despite having too little money for the fare. Bus drivers were briefly touched by the confederate during solicitation. Analysis showed that bus drivers who were touched accepted the request more favorably but only when made by a female.

The effect of touch on compliance to a request has traditionally been tested with small solicitation (answer to a small questionnaire, give a dime to a confederate ....). In our experiment a larger request was evaluated. Passersby, 53 men and 67 women, were asked by two confederates to look after a large and very excited dog for 10 minutes because each wanted to go into a pharmacy where animals were prohibited. In half of the cases, subjects were touched during the request. Analysis showed that, when touched, 55% of the subjects agreed with the request whereas 35% only in the no-touch control condition agreed. This finding indicates that touch was positively associated with the subjects' compliance (p<.03).