Investigated helping as a function of empathic anxiety (anxiety in response to modeled distress) and individual differences in sociopathic tendencies. Results indicated modeled distress produces increases in anxiety which are positively associated with helping and sociopathic individuals are less likely to help than are nonsociopathic individuals.…

The Maryland Division of Correction has implemented an innovative program that permits correctional officers to combine counseling case-management functions with their custory functions. Basically, the program relies on the quality of individual programming that results from the close personal, working relationship developed between officer and…

Examines the effect on a recipient of another's effort to provide help. Two variables, locus of responsibility for initiating a help attempt and type of outcome resulting from the help attempt, were manipulated in a three x two factorial design. Results indicated that the Requested help condition yielded the strongest obligation to help others.…

When facing terminal illness, the dying individual needs to accept death and his feelings about it, deal with potential isolation from friends and relatives, and find meaning in his remaining time. Family members need also to accept death. Family counseling offers a treatment method for responding to these needs. (Author)

This paper explores the role of empathic arousal in mediating helping behavior. Undergraduates listened to a recording of a radio newscast that described the situation of a young woman whose parents had been killed in an automobile accident. Subjects were instructed either to imagine how the woman felt about her situation (imagine condition), or…

An analysis of the helping process suggests two important components of behaving competently. In the present research, snake phobics provided help to confederates whom they believed to be similarly phobic. Modeling produces more subjective improvement than the expectancy manipulation. (Author)

Tested assumptions about behavioral cues that clients use to infer what helpers intend. Questions and acknowledgments were best predictors of client perceptions. Guiding was perceived more often than advisement actually occurred. Intention of communicating understanding of message shifted from reflection in the analogue to acknowledgment in the…

Social exchange theory was employed to predict instigative helping behavior as a function of two types of resources available to the recipient for reciprocation (social and non-social). The possibility of influencing reciprocation of both types of resources produced significant increases in subjects' helping. (Author)

The importance of the role of caring in human behavior has recently been recognized as Mayeroff conceptualizes caring as a process of helping the other to grow and actualize himself. The purpose of this paper is to present a validation study of a self report inventory of giving care and receiving care. The reliability of the former was .799, the…

Female and male three- to five-year-olds were presented with six story starts and were asked to finish the stories. Analysis of these narratives showed boys to be more concerned with coping with aggressive drives and channeling them into attempts at mastery and girls with caretaking and responding to the needs of others. (Author)

Considerable attention has been paid to the question of whether altruism increases with age through the years of childhood and early adolescence. The relationship between age and helping was examined for 128 boys and 128 girls in the first experiment. A second sample of an additional 256 participants was then studied to investigate factors which…

Sibling relationships are not only maintained throughout life in most cases, but assume considerable importance in old age. Siblings provide psychological support for each other as well as more tangible forms of helping and caregiving. In order to investigate variables leading to sibling help in the area of psychological support, a path model…

The norms of social responsibility and reciprocity govern altruistic behavior. Children and adults show a consistent developmental trend in comparisons of their responses to positive reciprocal situations and their subsequent altruism. Research indicates, however, that children, given the choice to behaviorally aid a needy individual, choose more…

Members of nuclear families look to one another for support in times of stress. Relationships between spouses and between parents and children contain the conditions required for effective counselling and helping. This paper presents the results of two tests of the hypothesis that such helping relationships in families act as moderators between…