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 (

Previous research has shown that exposure to various media is correlated to variations in human behaviour. Exposure to aggressive song lyrics increases aggressive action whereas exposure to songs with prosocial lyrics is associated with prosocial behaviour. An experiment was carried out where 18—20-year-old single female participants were exposed to romantic lyrics or to neutral ones while waiting for the experiment to start. Five minutes later, the participant interacted with a young male confederate in a marketing survey. During a break, the male confederate asked the participant for her phone number. It was found that women previously exposed to romantic lyrics complied with the request more readily than women exposed to the neutral ones. The theoretical implication of our results for the General Learning Model is discussed.

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.

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.

Starting with a review of research on love as an emotion, with an emphasis on romantic love, it is argued that despite strong emotional correlates evidence is lacking to conclude that love would meet the criteria of basic emotions. Theoretical developments are proposed where love is conceived of as a combination of an objectless drive, a desire for love, and a mythical and scripted representation that offers the possibility of labeling the current core affect. I argue that the basic motive for love is not so much the partner’s personal attributes, but rather the benefits of the transformative power of being in love.

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To test the effect of women's hair color on the frequency of offering help, male (n = 1,508) and female (n = 892) French motorists were tested in a hitchhiking situation. Five 20- to 22- yr.-old female confederates wore a wig with blonde, brown, or black hair. Each confederate was instructed to stand by the side of a road frequented by hitchhikers and hold out her thumb to catch a ride. Blonde hair, compared with brown hair or black hair, was associated with a small but significantly larger number of male drivers who stopped to offer a ride (18 vs 14%). No difference was found for those with brown and black hair (14 and 13%, respectively). No effect of hair color was found for female drivers who stopped. The greater attractiveness associated with blonde hair for women appears to explain these data.