SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Helping Behavior”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1997

Helping behaviors and the perception of helping intentions among Chinese students.

A questionnaire survey explored the kinds of helping behaviors given and received by Chinese college students and the kinds of explanations offered for these behaviors. Helping behaviors reported by the Chinese students paralleled those of U.S. college students in McGuire (1994); the behaviors were sorted, according to her typology, into casual, substantial personal, emotional, and emergency helping. Four categories of perceived intentions behind helping behaviors were identified: altruistic, normative, relationship, and exchange.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1975

Behavioral adjustment of psychiatric hospital patients and helping behavior.

This study investigated the relationship between behavioral adjustment of mental hospital patients and helping behavior in two distinctly different controlled situations. Forty hospitalized male patients between the ages of 20 and 45 were assigned to two groups of equal size according to ratings they received on the MACC Behavioral Adjustment Scale. Each subject was exposed to two separate and independent experimental situations calling for helping behavior. Helping in the first situation was defined as offering a confederate the use of an extra pencil, while in the second it was defined as offering to help a confederate in the hallway to pick up a box of pencils that had just been dropped. The results of both experiments confirmed the hypothesis that persons suffering more severe levels of disturbance and maladjustment perform significantly fewer helpful acts. Results were discussed in terms of empathy, self-concern, and response cost. Also some implications for treatment were discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Early family experiences and helping behaviors of physical therapists.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Ineffective or excessive helping behavior may encourage helpee dependence and overextension of helper resources. Early family experiences and perceptions of the helpee's situation both contribute to the expression of helping behavior in health professionals. The purpose of this study was to determine how early family experiences and variations in perceived patient responsibility influence physical therapist helping behavior. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Five hundred physical therapists were surveyed by mail, resulting in a final sample of 221 (44%) respondents who completed the Family of Origin Scale (FOS), measuring the nature of their early family experiences, and a Helping Questionnaire, measuring their helping behavior, perceptions of replaceability, and feelings of compassion for four hypothetical patients. The four patients represented Brickman's models of helping and coping, varying in high and low responsibility for the problem and high and low responsibility for the solution to the problem. RESULTS: Subjects who scored in the dysfunctional or neutral ranges on the FOS had lower scores on their willingness to help and feelings of compassion than did subjects who scored in the functional range on the FOS. Regardless of early family experiences, subjects' scores were higher for willingness to help and feelings of compassion and lower in their perceptions of replaceability for patients who were not thought to be responsible for their medical problem (medical and compensatory models). In contrast, subjects' scores were lower for their willingness to help and feelings of compassion and higher in their perceptions of replaceability when patients were felt to be responsible for their medical problem (enlightenment and moral models). CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION: All subjects, regardless of early family experience, showed helping responses that linked feelings of compassion with greater tendencies to help. Variations in perceived patient responsibility for the medical problem, rather than early family experience, appears to be a major determinant in motivating both compassion and helping behavior. Thus, helpers may be more likely to overextend themselves or create patient dependence when patients are perceived to be not responsible for the cause of their problem. [Curtis KA, Davis CM, Trimble TK, Papoulidis DK. Early family experiences and helping behaviors of physical therapists.

Adult↗

PubMed2000

Critical care nurses' perceptions of obstacles and helpful behaviors in providing end-of-life care to dying patients.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about nurses' perceptions of obstacles or helpful behaviors ("helps") in providing end-of-life care in the intensive care setting. OBJECTIVE: To determine the importance of various obstacles and helps in providing end-of-life care as perceived by critical care nurses. METHODS: A questionnaire was mailed to 300 members of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. Nurses were asked to rate obstacles and helps in giving end-of-life care, and additional obstacles and/or helps, and answer demographic questions. RESULTS: Six of the top 10 obstacles were related to issues with patients' families that make care at the end of life more difficult, such as the family's not fully understanding the meaning of life support, not accepting the patient's poor prognosis, requesting more technical treatment than the patient wished, and being angry. Added obstacles related mostly to problems with physicians' behavior. Most helps were ways to make dying easier for patients and patients' families, such as agreement among physicians about care, dying with dignity, and families' acceptance of the prognosis. Added helps included allowing music, pets, and so forth into the patient's room. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses have difficulties with patients' families and physicians concerning end-of-life issues, especially when the behaviors remove the nurses from caring for a patient or cause the patient pain or prolong suffering. Nurses do not acknowledge having difficulty providing care to dying patients aside from conflicts that arise because of patients' families and physicians.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

[Automatic social behavior: how does activation of the concepts of egoism and altruism influence helping behavior?].

An experimental study investigated the influence of priming on helping behavior. A scrambled sentence test was used to prime groups with the concepts of altruism or egoism. In a third group a neutral concept was activated. The results indicated that there is no difference in helping behavior between the altruism and the neutral group. However, in the egoism priming condition participants showed higher latencies and helped less often than participants in both other conditions.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

The relationship between personality and discretionary helping behaviors.

The relationship between personality and helping behaviors in three different contexts was examined in a field study. In a sample of 178 employees from three professional organizations, measures of the Big Five Personality factors were found to be related to discretionary helping behaviors performed in the context of one's home, workplace and the larger society. Collectively, the five personality factors accounted for 7% of the variance in Household Activities and Chores, 26% of the variance in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and 10% of the variance in Volunteerism. Implications of these relations are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Effects of participants' sex and targets' perceived need on supermarket helping behavior.

A field experiment was focused on whether participants' sex and targets' perceived need influenced helping behavior. Confederates approached 332 (166 women, 166 men) same-sex participants in a supermarket and asked for 25 cents to help purchase one of three randomly assigned food items: milk which was defined as a high-need item, frozen cookie dough which served as a low-need item, or alcohol, which was a low-need item with negative social connotations. The dependent variable was whether a participant provided help. Participants' sex was not associated with helping behavior as equal proportions of men and women provided assistance to the confederate; however, perceived need strongly influenced whether the confederate received help. Specifically, the high-need item produced more helping behavior than did either of the low-need items, and the socially acceptable low-need item of cookie dough produced more helping behavior than the socially unacceptable low-need item of alcohol. This may be interpreted as showing that what one buys and how deserving of help one appears to be influence whether one is helped by others.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Liking and attributions of motives as mediators of the relationships between individuals' reputations, helpful behaviors, and raters' reward decisions.

Two studies investigated the mediating effects of liking and attributions of motives on the relationship between a ratee's reputation and helpful behaviors and raters' reward decisions. During managerial simulations, raters evaluated individuals after watching videotapes in which the individual's reputation and helpful behaviors were manipulated. Results indicated an interaction effect between reputation and helpful behaviors such that a helpful person with a good reputation received more rewards than did a helpful person with a bad reputation. In contrast, an unhelpful person with a good reputation did not receive better rewards than an unhelpful person with a bad reputation. Moreover, raters' liking of ratees and the motives raters attributed to ratees' helpful behaviors mediated the relationship between the manipulations and raters' reward decisions.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Population demography and the evolution of helping behaviors.

Limited dispersal may favor the evolution of helping behaviors between relatives as it increases their relatedness, and it may inhibit such evolution as it increases local competition between these relatives. Here, we explore one way out of this dilemma: if the helping behavior allows groups to expand in size, then the kin-competition pressure opposing its evolution can be greatly reduced. We explore the effects of two kinds of stochasticity allowing for such deme expansion. First, we study the evolution of helping under environmental stochasticity that may induce complete patch extinction. Helping evolves if it results in a decrease in the probability of extinction or if it enhances the rate of patch recolonization through propagules formed by fission of nonextinct groups. This mode of dispersal is indeed commonly found in social species. Second, we consider the evolution of helping in the presence of demographic stochasticity. When fecundity is below its value maximizing deme size (undersaturation), helping evolves, but under stringent conditions unless positive density dependence (Allee effect) interferes with demographic stochasticity. When fecundity is above its value maximizing deme size (oversaturation), helping may also evolve, but only if it reduces negative density-dependent competition.

Altruism↗

PubMed1985

Development of self-care skills and helping behaviors of adolescents in a group home through correspondence training.

The present study used a do-report correspondence training procedure to develop self-care skills and helping behaviors among adolescents of a group home. Points were delivered contingent upon true reports about behaviors (self-care skills and helping behaviors) performed earlier. Two multiple-baseline designs (across behaviors and across groups) were employed. The results showed increased levels of self-care skills and helping behaviors (the corresponding nonverbal behaviors) during reinforcement of true reports, relative to baseline conditions. These levels were maintained during the introduction of a follow-up (maintenance) phase, in which subjects were exposed to similar procedures of correspondence training but with no reinforcement contingencies for truthful reports about prior behaviors.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed2005

Attribution and helping behavior: testing the attribution-affect-help judgment model in a Saudi sample.

A review of the literature on Weiner's attributional theory indicates that the theory has not been tested in Arabic cultures. The present study examined the reactions of Saudi men toward a friend with AIDS, using Weiner's attributional theory of social motivation. A sample of 298 Saudi men read two different vignettes about a friend with AIDS, in which the cause of AIDS was manipulated. Then the assignment of responsibility, reactions of anger and pity, and participants' willingness to provide help were measured.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

[Helping behavior and psychosocial well-being in elderly people].

This study examined relationship between everyday helping behaviors and psychosocial well-being in elderly people. Elderly people attending an institute for adult education (n=471), age ranged from 57 to 82, participated in the study. They completed questionnaires that assessed the following variables: everyday helping behaviors, psychological reactions to helping, and psychosocial well-being, defined as self-esteem, moral, and social integration. The data indicated that psychological reactions resulting from. helping consisted of three components: "positive effects on the self and others," "negative effects on the self and others," and "positive effects on the self." The helper's psychological reactions to helping had a significant effect on self-esteem, moral, and social integration. There were gender differences in the effect of these variables. These results suggest that an affirmative helping experience in everyday life provides elderly people with a feeling of psychosocial well-being.

Aged↗

PubMed2005

Linking personality to helping behaviors at work: an interactional perspective.

Previous efforts to elucidate dispositional antecedents of organizational citizenship behaviors have yielded equivocal results. The current study presents and tests a theoretical argument for expecting conscientiousness to interact with interpersonal dimensions of personality in predicting helping behaviors. As hypothesized, the responses of 374 women and their supervisors reveal significant interactions between conscientiousness, on the one hand, and agreeableness, extraversion, and emotional stability, on the other, in predicting helping behaviors. Clarifying the relationship between personality and helping, these results suggest that the impact of conscientiousness in a social context depends on a positive interpersonal orientation. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Affect↗

PubMed1984

Helping behavior of females: effects of stress and commonality of fate.

In a design replication of Dovidio and Morris' study, the effects of stress and commonality of fate on helping behavior were examined. Ss were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: high stress/common fate (n = 15), high stress/dissimilar fate (n = 15), or low stress/common fate (n = 15), or low stress/dissimilar fate (n = 15). While the initial study involved male Ss, the present study involved females in order to assess the generality of the original findings. Other aspects of the original experiment were repeated as closely as possible. Consistent with the original study, a significant interaction was found, indicating that Ss were more helpful under conditions of high stress and common fate. Results also revealed a greater overall amount of helping behavior than that found by Dovidio and Morris.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Computer and manual self-help behavioral strategies for smoking reduction: initial feasibility and one-year follow-up.

This study sought to test the feasibility of two self-help behavioral interventions to reduce and maintain a 50% reduction in smoking among those unable or unwilling to quit, and to evaluate the impact of smoking reduction on subsequent quit attempts. Ninety-three smokers who desired to reduce rather than quit smoking were entered in the study and randomly assigned to either computerized scheduled gradual reduction (CSGR) or to a manual-based selective elimination reduction (SER). Both groups produced significant reductions in smoking (approximately 10 cigarettes per day, during the 7-week treatment phase), which were maintained over one year. The CSGR group reported greater mean percent reductions in smoking from pre- to post-treatment (37% for CSGR, 20% for SER) and a greater percentage of subjects meeting the 50% reduction goal (30% for CSGR, 16% for SER) compared with the SER group. The groups were comparable, however, on all other outcome measures at post-treatment and at 6- and 12-month follow-up. Although subjects with a current desire for smoking cessation were excluded from this study, one-third of the subjects reported a 24-hour quit attempt in the year following study initiation, and 8.6% of the subjects met 7-day point-prevalence criteria for abstinence (CO validated) at the 12-month follow-up. The results of this study lend support to the feasibility of self-help behavioral interventions to produce sustained reductions in smoking rates without apparent negative impact on subsequent quit attempts.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Identity and emergency intervention: how social group membership and inclusiveness of group boundaries shape helping behavior.

Two experiments exploring the effects of social category membership on real-life helping behavior are reported. In Study 1, intergroup rivalries between soccer fans are used to examine the role of identity in emergency helping. An injured stranger wearing an in-group team shirt is more likely to be helped than when wearing a rival team shirt or an unbranded sports shirt. In Study 2, a more inclusive social categorization is made salient for potential helpers. Helping is extended to those who were previously identified as out-group members but not to those who do not display signs of group membership. Taken together, the studies show the importance of both shared identity between bystander and victim and the inclusiveness of salient identity for increasing the likelihood of emergency intervention.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Gratitude and prosocial behavior: helping when it costs you.

The ability of the emotion gratitude to shape costly prosocial behavior was examined in three studies employing interpersonal emotion inductions and requests for assistance. Study 1 demonstrated that gratitude increases efforts to assist a benefactor even when such efforts are costly (i.e., hedonically negative), and that this increase differs from the effects of a general positive affective state. Additionally, mediational analyses revealed that gratitude, as opposed to simple awareness of reciprocity norms, drove helping behavior. Furthering the theory that gratitude mediates prosocial behavior, Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and demonstrated gratitude's ability to function as an incidental emotion by showing it can increase assistance provided to strangers. Study 3 revealed that this incidental effect dissipates if one is made aware of the true cause of the emotional state. Implications of these findings for the role of gratitude in building relationships are discussed.

Affect↗

PubMed1999

An attribution-emotion model of helping behavior.

To investigate the help-giving judgment of the attribution-emotion model further, data from five manifest variables of controllability, responsibility, anger, sympathy, and help-giving, were subjected to path analysis, which provided an easy interpretation of the model. Participants were 90 men and 81 women in an introductory psychology course.

Adult↗