Risk of Embarrassment and Helping

To examine the effects of one kind of cost on helping behavior, 32 males and 32 females were provided with an opportunity to offer help spontaneously in a nonemergency situation. In one condition persons risked a somewhat embarrassing encounter by helping, while the other involved little or no risk of embarrassment. Helping was more frequent in the non-embarrassing condition; there was no overall sex difference in helping, but sex interacted with the experimental treatment to produce a strong interaction. The results support contentions that potential embarrassment deters helping in nonemergency situations and thatt person-situation interactions ought to be more carefully studied by social psychologists.