Abstract
The proposition that positive feelings increase helping because they increase the perception of personal power implies that if the person prefers not to help, positive feelings would decrease helping. This was tested in an experiment that varied feelings and pleasantness of the helping task. False meter feedback was used to manipulate feelings, and an indirect check on the manipulation showed that it was effective in varying feelings. As expected from the notion that positive feelings allow the person to feel free to refuse to help, there was an interaction between feelings and pleasantness of the helping task; positive feelings produced less helping than neutral or negative feelings when the helping task was unpleasant.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aderman, D. Elation, depression, and helping behavior.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1972,24 91–101.
Cialdini, R. B., Darby, B. L., & Vincent, J. E. Transgression and altruism: A case for hedonism.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1973,9 502–516.
Cialdini, R. B., & Kendrick, D. T. Altruism as hedonism: A social development perspective on the relationship of negative mood state and helping.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1976,34 907–914.
Goodman, L. A. On partitioning chi square and detecting partial association in three-way contingency tables.Journal of Royal Statistical Society—Series B, 1969,31 486–498.
Isen, A. Success, failure, attention and reaction to others: The warm glow of success.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1970,15 294–301.
Isen, A., & Levin, P. The effect of feeling good on helping: Cookies and kindness.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1972,21 383–388.
Isen, A., & Shalker, T. E.Do you “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative” when you are in a good mood? Unpublished manuscript, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1977.
Isen, A., & Simmons, S. The effect of feeling good on a helping task that is incompatible with good mood.Social Psychology 1978,41 346–349.
Mills, J., Jellison, J. M., & Kennedy, J. The attribution of attitudes from feelings: Effect of positive or negative feelings when the attitude object is benefited or harmed. In J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes, & R. F. Kidd (Eds.),New directions in attribution research. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1976.
Moore, B., Underwood, B., & Rosenhan, D. L. Affect and altruism.Developmental Psychology 1973,8 99–104.
Velton, E. C.The induction of elation and depression through the reading of structured sets of mood statements. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California, 1967.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Forest, D., Clark, M.S., Mills, J. et al. Helping as a function of feeling state and nature of the helping behavior. Motiv Emot 3, 161–169 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01650601
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01650601