Abstract
People do not always ask for help even when they need it. What motivates people to offer help when there is ambiguity surrounding whether the help is wanted or needed? In three studies, we demonstrated that people with a stronger motivation to support others’ well-being (i.e., have compassionate goals) were more willing to offer help to another person through a greater nonzero-sum mindset even in the absence of a request for help. In Study 1, compassionate goals were associated with a greater willingness to help at low and high levels of ambiguity in the U.S. and Japan. In Study 2, the perception that helping benefits oneself as well as others mediated the association between compassionate goals and willingness to help, regardless of culture and situational ambiguity. In Study 3, a nonzero-sum belief about relationships mediated the association between compassionate goals and spending more time helping a friend in Japan. In these studies, the motivation to project a desirable image of oneself (i.e., self-image goals) either showed weak, negative, or no associations with the willingness to help. These findings suggest that compassionate goals that do not involve self-sacrifice are a stronger motivator for helping in ambiguous situations.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current studies are available in OSF repository: https://osf.io/k3dvf/?view_only=47db7de808dd4c1981685b18ba06143c
Notes
The Japanese Revised Compassionate and Self-Image Goals Scale (Niiya, 2016) was only validated in Japan but its earlier version (Niiya et al., 2013) was validated in both the U.S. and Japan. Study 2 further employs the Culturally Invariant Compassionate and Self-Image Goals Scale (Niiya & Crocker, 2019) for which metric invariance was found.
As reported in Niiya et al. (2022), we also found a main effect of culture, such that the Japanese were less likely to help than the Americans (b = -.52, SE = .05, p < .001, 95% CI [-.62, -.41]) and a Certainty X Culture interaction (b = .06, SE = .01, p < .001, 95% CI [.04, .07]), with the Japanese showing a steeper slope than Americans.
As reported in Niiya et al. (2022), we also found a Culture X Ambiguity interaction (b = -.44, SE = .14, p < .001, 95% CI [-.71, -.17]), with the Japanese showing a lower willingness to help than Americans, especially in ambiguous situations. The Compassionate goals X Culture X Ambiguity was marginally significant (b = .33, SE = .19, p = .091, 95% CI [-.05, .71]). To check the pattern of this interaction, we conducted separate regression analyses by culture and by scenarios. Although the association between compassionate goals and willingness to help varied slightly by culture and scenarios (see Supplement 3), we confirmed that these associations were all positive and significant, with the unstandardized coefficients ranging from .25 in the American Plane situation to .63 in the Japanese Tripping situation.
We repeated the same moderated mediation analyses with each of the self-image goals to see whether mediation through the expectation of good outcomes for others and the self was unique to compassionate goals. Some indirect effects emerged as significant, but none was consistent across cultures or situational ambiguities as was the case with compassionate goals (see Supplement 4).
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This research was supported by KAKENHI grant by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, 16KK0064.
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Yu Niiya contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Syamil Yakin and Yu Niiya. The first draft of the manuscript was written by both authors. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Niiya, Y., Yakin, S. Compassionate goals are associated with a greater willingness to help through a nonzero-sum mindset. Curr Psychol 43, 17198–17212 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05643-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05643-z