Helping: The effects of sex differences and locus of causality

Abstract

Male and female subjects were presented with four scenarios each involving the subject driving a car and passing a hitch‐hiker requesting a lift. The scenarios were kept constant except for the sex of the person in need of help and the implied cause of their difficulty (i.e. internal or external causality). Three response measures were taken: likelihood of helping, perceived degree of blame and primary emotional response. Results indicated that males were more likely to offer help than females, and male hitch‐hikers were more likely to be offered a lift than female hitch‐hikers regardless of locus of causality. Males were more likely to help females where the implied cause of need was internal than where the implied cause was external, whereas the reverse was found for female subjects. Subjects tended to attribute blame in scenarios depicting a hitch‐hiker of the same sex to a greater degree than in scenarios depicting a hitch‐hiker of the opposite sex. It is argued that neither emotional reactions nor attributions of blame explain adequately the sex differences in helping behaviour. In addition, female subjects' helping judgements were found to be influenced by their primary affective reaction whereas no relationship was found between males' judgements of helping and emotional reaction. These results are discussed with reference to attribution and social identity theories of helping.