Helping behavior following a failure experience¹

Abstract

Abstract:A study was conducted to reconcile two conflicting models on the relationship of shame to helping. According to the negative-mood relief model, ashamed people try to help others to relieve a negative mood induced by a shameful experience. The self-esteem maintenance model suggests, however, that people whose self-esteem is threatened utilize helping behavior instrumentally to restore self-esteem. In the present study, 84 male subjects took an alleged intelligence test and received fictitious poor results, and in the next experimental stage, set up by a male experimenter who was not an observer of the subject's failure in the former stage, they were requested to help a person also unaware of subject's failure. On the basis of this paradigm for the shame-helping relation, the "ability" of the target person compared to the subject (superior vs. inferior) and the content of helping (meaningful vs. not meaningful) were manipulated. One level of each experimental variable was supposed to serve as an obstacle to maintaining self-esteem. Besides this 2 x 2 factorial design, subjects were classified as high or low in self-esteem; a control condition (with 16 subjects) was also included. The results provided unequivocal support for the self-esteem maintenance model: ashamed subjects were helpful only in the inferior-target/meaningful-help condition. This result did not interact with the relative levels of self-esteem; the lack of this interaction is explained in terms of self-esteem being trait.Key words: helping, shame, self-esteem enhancement, negative-mood relief, self-esteem.Human nature is fundamentally and universally egoistical; that is, the ultimate goal of helping another person is to increase one's own welfare. This view has long been dominant and widespread, especially in Western cultures. Probably none of us can completely deny such a cynical view, however uncomfortable it may be. Indeed, we know well that many forms of our own welfare can be derived from helping others, such as getting material rewards or public praise or even self-praise. In the field of psychology, several experimental researches that demonstrate the existence of egoistic motives lurking behind helping behavior have been conducted and have become familiar to us. Various types of negative emotions increase helpfulness, such as shame/embarrassment, guilt, or depression/sorrow. ashamed subjects complied with a request for help more than unashamed subjects did (e.g.. Apsler, 1975: Brown & Smart, 1991.Generally this shame-helping relation has been interpreted to mean that ashamed subjects helped someone to escape distress caused by a shameful experience. But if we are contented with having roughly brought universal human egoism to light and terminate the search for human nature, an important question will be left unanswered: what is the psychological process underlying the shame-helping relation? At least two models can explain that psychological process: the self-esteem maintenance model, and the negative-mood relief model. The differe...

Componentes y correlatos del autoconcepto en la escala de Piers-Harris

“…Se ha estudiado asimismo el papel que actividades de voluntariado desempeñan en el desarrollo de los adolescentes (Johnson, Beebe, Mortimer y Snyder, 1998). En los últimos años, las relaciones de autoestima y conducta de ayuda parecen haber suscitado el interés de investigadores y de publicaciones en Japón (Ito, 1996;Simizu, 1994;Yagi y Shimizu, 1996, pero cf. asimismo Smith y otros, 1999.…”