HELPING BEHAVIOR IN DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS: DOES AGE AFFECT HELPING?

Helping behavior has been researched for decades among psychologists and other individuals in different fields. Research seeks to understand the factors involved in what prompts a person to help someone in need. This study attempted to merge the two disciplines of social psychology and evolutionary psychology as important sources to understanding how helping behavior plays a role in everyday interaction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between a stranger’s previous helping behavior, age of the participant, and age of the stranger on a participant’s willingness to help the stranger. Additionally, the other purpose was to see if age plays a role in indirect reciprocity. Participants answered a set of questions that corresponded to two different vignettes. Among some of the questions, they rated their willingness to help the person in need in the vignette. The other questions functioned as distractors. One face stimulus represented the “target” and was presented beside the questions. Additionally, participants indicated their willingness to help the “target” as the individual who either helped or did not help the person in need. Results indicated that there was no effect of older people’s willingness to help the older target related to previous helping behavior. There was also no effect of younger people’s willingness to help the younger target regardless of their previous helping behavior. Overall, people did not show a preference to help individuals of the same age group. Overall, people were less willing to help when the target appeared less helpful. People were much more likely to help someone who had been helpful to someone else earlier. Results suggested that younger participants expressed a greater willingness to help older adults regardless of whether they appeared less helpful or more helpful and regardless of the situation. In most of the conditions, people expressed a greater willingness to help an older person. There appeared to be little effect of age on helping behavior