Theories about helping behavior have branched into two basic areas: egoistic and altruistic. Egoistic theories describe helping as being induced by sadness or distress; the Empathy-Altruism hypothesis contends that people help when they feel empathy for another in need. Fultz, Schaller, and Cialdini (1988) looked at the possibility that three…

Male and female experimenters requested adult shoppers (N=178) to fill out a questionnaire. Refusal data showed shoppers helping other-sex more than same-sex experimenters. Other results showed a significant three-way interaction among helper and helpee sex and sex-typing and situation sex-typing and that helper sex-typing did not have significant…

Investigated effects of interviewer use of positive or negative self-disclosure and interviewer-subject sex pairing on subjects' perceptions of the interviewer and of their own behavior. Results indicated interviewers disclosing negative information about themselves were perceived as significantly more empathic, warm, and credible than…

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…

Examined effects of presentation of a peer-in-need stimulus to preschool children in real versus hypothetical contexts, with results indicating a significantly higher incidence of helping behavior in real situations. Nature of helping response as a preoperational reaction to concrete contextual cues is verified. (Author/DST)

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)

Research has suggested that people not sharing a common fate lack a sense of group identity, thus decreasing the tendency for helping behavior. To study the effects of stress and commonality of fate on helping behavior, 60 female college students participated in a replication of an earlier study which used male subjects. Participants were assigned…

Frequency measures were based on the first 30 minutes of audiotaped interviews with clients, taken at the end of prepracticum, during practicum, and at least three months after training. Data indicate males make more responses overall than do females. Training of specific skills is affirmed. (Author)

In considering the question of whether education leads to better and more supportive human beings, a survey was conducted on how formal education and demographic variables, such as age, gender, and degree of urbanization, influence helping behavior and social attitudes. Data were collected from 588 Austrians, ages 14 to 89. Results of the survey…

Studies exposure to life stress as an explanation for gender differences in older adults' utilization of social support. Results suggest that, as stressful events increase, elderly men and women are equally likely to become more involved in their social network, while gender differences emerge in response to chronic financial strain. (JS)

Investigates effects of sex of judge, sex of referent, and sex-pairing of judge and referent on level of understanding, or affective sensitivity, of school counselors. Male and female counselors were found to be equally accurate in their empathic judgments. There were no detected effects of sex-pairing. (Author)