Abstract
Providing help to a help-seeker depends on various factors such as the cost of helping, the presence of bystanders, empathy, distress, and characteristics of help-seekers. The present research explores the interplay of various factors when help is asked alone or accompanied, and how that influences helping behavior. We argue that help-providers will experience more empathy and distress for single help-seekers than multiple. Hence, we hypothesize that helping would be higher when the help-seekers ask for help alone than being accompanied. Four studies were conducted to test the hypothesis. The first two studies were vignette-based experiments, which examined the chances of helping a single and an accompanied help-seeker in two different help contexts. Study 3 examined the hypothesis in a real-life help context through a field experiment. The results of the three studies supported our hypothesis. Study 4 explored the reasons for such differential helping patterns. The result showed that the different levels of empathy and distress for alone and accompanied help-seekers led to differential helping in these two cases. These results are discussed using the empathy-altruism model, the negative state relief hypothesis, and the cost of helping/not-helping.
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The data set of the present study is not publicly available due to project requirement but are available from the corresponding author on request.
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Roy, S., Maheshwari, S. & Mukherjee, T. Does a single help-seeker receive more help? The effect of being alone or accompanied on the chance of receiving help. Curr Psychol 42, 1957–1965 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01568-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01568-z