“…Forty Israeli boys and girls 12-13 years of age participated as subjects One week before the expenment, a large group of children filled out the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (SEI, Coopersmith, 1967) On the basis of their scores, the upper and lower thirds were invited to participate m the study (means were 90 and 64 1 for the high and low self-esteem groups 2 As noted earlier the responses on the Rosenberg Feelings of Inadequacy Scale were scored such that the lower scores reflect higher levels of self-esteem Responses on the commitment to reciprocity scale were scored such that higher scores reflect higher level of commitment Thus a negative correlation reflects a positive relation between these two variables respectively, ((38) = 20 24, p < 01 The expenmental design was a 2 (High vs Low Self-Esteem) X 2 (Perceived Opportunity to Reciprocate vs No Opportunity to Reciprocate) between-subjects design Each experimental cell included ten individuals P rocedure Upon arriving at the experimental room each suhject was told that he or she would participate in a word formation task Suhjects suhsequentlv received a page with eight letters and were asked to form as many words as they could from these letters Suhjects were told that they would receive a prize proportional to the number of words that they had formed at the end of the game Also, subjects were told that another child was working on the same task in an adjoining room After five minutes the subject was instructed to stop working The experimenter then took the suhject's form and compared it with the form of the other individual who was supposedly sitting in an adjoining room Subjects were then told that simple words (l e , words which appeared on both lists) canceled each other out * Thus all suhjects were left with only eight words At this point the experimenter indicated to subjects that the other individual s hst contained several words which the suhject's did not, and that he or she could (a) ask the other subject for additional words hy writing them a note or (b) take five more minutes to come up with additional words by themselves Perceived opportunity to reciprocate In the perceived opportunity to reciprocate condition, subjects were informed that later the other subject could also write them a note asking for additional words In the no perceived opportunity to reciprocate condition, suhjects were told that because of administrative considerations (e g , time constraints) the other would not be ahle to ask them for help in the future After these instructions the experimenter noted the subject's decision and the latency (m seconds) it took him or her to arrive at the decision Index of help-seekmg Since past research on help-seeking has used both actual decision to seek or not seek help (e g , Nadler, Shapira, & Ben-Itzhak, 1982), and the latency of arriving at this decision (e g , Tessler & Schwartz, 1972) as measures of help-seeking, an index taking into account both indices of help-seeking was developed This composite index was based on the assumptions that (a) a shorter latency in deciding to seek another s help represents greater readiness to seek help than does a longer latency, and (h) a shorter latency in deciding not to seek help represents a greater reluctance to seek help than does a longer latency Accordingly, a 10-point index was 3 The number of males and females in each of these cells was about the samf (4-6 males and females in each cell) Thus, sex of subject cannot serve as a basis for alternative mterpretations 4 The elimination of words that are common is part of many similar wordgeneration games played by children in Israel Consequently, employing this rule did not seem strange to the children in the present study alue devised in the following Thus help-seeking ...…”