Sidney Rosen

Effects of felt adequacy and opportunity to reciprocate on help seeking

Abstract This experiment was prompted by the belief that felt inadequacy and lack of opportunity to reciprocate act as deterrents to help seeking when help is needed. The experiment was conducted on 56 freshmen by modifying Greenberg and Shapiros physical disability paradigm. Subjects were told that they could not meet the quota on a manual task but had done well (poorly) for persons similarly handicapped (by arm in sling). Later they learned that the electricity would be shut off in 2 hr (15 min), making it possible (impossible) to help the visually handicapped fellow worker later on a visual task. The hypothesis that felt inadequacy inhibits help seeking was fully supported, while the corresponding hypothesis regarding lack of opportunity to reciprocate received only partial support. There were no sex differences. The relevance of these data for embarrassment theory is discussed.

Evaluating an intervention program for the elderly

The effectiveness of mental health group experiences on senior citizen center participants needing such services was assessed through a quasi-experiment involving 68 MH group participants and 31 comparison cases judged not in need of MH services. The evidence indicated substantial increases in social and nonsocial activity, morale, and self-satisfaction. Senior center personnel provided corroborative observations. The changes were such that by the conclusion of the group sessions the “experimentals” had come to function at a level that was indistinguishable from their comparison group. By contrast, 18 elderly needing such mental health services, but attending senior centers where services were unavailable, showed no improvement or declined over time.

Validating a “spurning scale” for teachers

Based on a model on helpers’ reactions to rejection of their help, a spurning scale for teachers was constructed, comprising items that examine teachers’ perception of spurning of their help/advice by students and colleagues. Three avenues were taken to assess the validity of the scale: The relationships of the spurning scores with burnout scores; the relationships of spurning scores with job (dis)satisfaction and with job turnover; and relationships of spurning scores with job stresses from different sources.In-service teachers enrolled in a teacher training program were invited to fill out a questionnaire that contained these variables. Results suggest that the spurning scale is valid.

How efficacious, caring samaritans cope when their help is rejected unexpectedly

This experiment, with 167 introductory psychology subjects, successfully replicated and extended to a wider array of affective, evaluative, and cognitive reactions, previous research on how would-be helpers cope when their help is rejected. It again supported the thesis that violation of perceived expectancy of acceptance mediates the effects of rejection. Using an individual difference measure of generalized self-perceptions of being a person who is sufficientlyefficacious and caring (acronym, EFCA) to help others, we found support for the predictions that high EFCAs would react more strongly than low EFCAs on “proximal” forms of coping, but relatively less strongly on “confrontational” (future-oriented) forms. Our rationale was that high EFCAs expect more acceptance, are more optimistic, and have greater self-investment in the outcome. Mixed support was obtained for the prediction that situational differences in prior expectancy of acceptance moderate the effects of rejection.

Aggression as equity restoration

Abstract Equity theory was used to predict the amount of aggression that an individual would emit after being subjected to either positive or negative inequity. Actual and psychological equity restoration techniques were considered. Fifty-four males participated in the experiment. Results indicate that actual equity-restoring techniques were adopted by all participants, with negative inequity resulting in increased levels of aggression and positive inequity resulting in a mixture of responses. In addition, the use of these techniques occurred at different points in time during the aggressive encounter for participants in the two inequity conditions. The effect of prior equity restoration attempts on aggression in later trials was also tested.

Discriminatory buckpassing: Delegating transmission of bad news☆

Abstract Subjects were assigned the role of personnel manager while a confederate served as their assistant in an experiment having implications for organizational hierarchies. Their task was to test a job applicant (confederate) and, based on his (rigged) passing/failing performance, to inform him of whether he would be hired for a (bogus) USDA position. Managers also had to decide whether to tell the good or bad news directly to the applicant or to delegate (buckpass) the telling to their assistant. After the first candidate left, a second arrived unexpectedly. It was predicted that managers would initially adopt the preferred role of discriminatory buckpassing (telling good news directly, buckpassing on bad news), but would see the second candidates arrival as an opportunity to achieve equity with their assistant. There was no evidence of equitable behavior. Instead, discriminatory buckpassing occurred to a nonsignificant extent on the first candidate and to a significant extent on the second.

Kindergarten principals in Hong Kong

Aims primarily to examine how stressful kindergarten principals as leaders and managers of their schools found their work to be, and if such job stress was related to negative emotions and job satisfaction. The secondary aim was to explore if social support from a close friend could reduce and buffer job stress. Seventy‐seven kindergarten principals in Hong Kong responded to a questionnaire containing the variables of interest. The results showed that the principals found their work to be moderately stressful. However, emotional and informational support from a close friend had beneficial impacts on stress.

Recipient need and efficacious caring as moderators of helpers’ reactions to rejection and acceptance

Two experiments support and extend the thesis that rejection of their help is stressful for would-be helpers, and that it leads to “damage controlling” reactions whose eventual goal is to restore their self-image of being efficacious at helping and caring. American college students were invited to offer help, if they wished, to a poorly performing (confederate) recipient who then either rejected or accepted it. Rejected helpers expressed relatively negative affect, biased postdictions of low acceptance, claims of low decision control, recipient- and self-devaluation, and less desire for further association. Individual differences in self-perceived “efficacious caring” and manipulated level of recipient need were shown to moderate some of these outcome reactions. Violated expectancy of acceptance was shown to mediate some of these reactions. Studies were cited showing the generalizability of these findings and theoretical framework to applied contexts and across cultural settings.

Some Paradoxical Status Implications of Helping and Being Helped

A prosocial act, on the surface, may appear as a redistribution of resources in the direction of equalizing the worth of donor and recipient. Yet we are told that the act may well promote inequality in a direction favoring the donor. We seem, then, to be confronted by a paradox. Since paradoxes have little currency in our empirical world, how do we resolve it?

Psychological differentiation and the evaluation of juridic information: cognitive and affective consequences

Abstract The cognitive and evaluative involvements of field dependence-independence in the processing of available information were examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, ninety-six female undergraduates were assigned to field-dependent and field-independent conditions (via a median split on Embedded Figures Test scores). Half were given information about the trial of a man accused of attempted manslaughter that was suggestive of guilt; the other half received information suggestive of innocence. They were asked to indicate their confidence in the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and to recall arguments from the information they received. Field-dependent subjects were significantly more extreme in their confidence judgments, particularly in the exonerating conditions. They also showed nonsignificantly poorer recall. In Experiment 2, forty-eight subjects from Experiment 1 were given arguments biased in the opposite direction of their original sets. Field-dependent subjects were significantly more likely to shift their confidence judgments and report discomfort when the new information suggested innocence, and to underrecall new information when it suggested guilt. Field-dependent subjects again showed poorer recall. The results of both experiments were discussed in terms of their support for a field-dependence value bias and encoding deficiency.