Giving and Social Appearance

DOES IMPROVED SOCIAL APPEARANCE IMPROVE THE GIVING RESPONSE?

Many American citizens have become skeptical of pleas for help from strangers, particularly when the help requested is money. The increasing level of class consciousness that characterizes contemporary society in the United States leads many people to perceive requests for monetary assistance from some strangers within the context of a ruse designed to permit such strangers to generate income without participating in societally productive work. This issue provided the basis for an experiment in social psychology designed to test the willingness of female subjects as individuals to provide monetary assistance to a another female who is not known to the subjects.

The results of the research found that women would empathize with a female stranger seeking a low-level of monetary assistance in a situation wherein the need was easily apparent, and that the requested assistance would be provided. The research also found that a female stranger perceived a being a member of a lower socioeconomic classification that the person from whom help was requested would be subjected to greater efforts to verify the actual need.

Providing assistance or rendering aid to a stranger in need traditionally has been regarded as a near obligation in civilized society. From as far back as the biblical era, however, the concept of the Good Samaritan has been questioned. In the increasingly violent social enviro

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ated, local telephone call (20 cents). The experimental design provided for the female stranger to approach a female subject, and ask for the monetary assistance. The need to make the telephone call was justified on the pretext that the female stranger had locked her purse inside of her automobile, and that she needed to call her husband to ask that he bring a second set of keys to the automobile to her. Requests for assistance were directed to female shoppers exiting an up-scale shopping mall. These subjects were assumed to belong to an upper-middle class socioeconomic group. The willingness of subjects to provide the necessary assistance to a female stranger was tested through the structuring of a situational variable into the experiment. In one assistance-soliciting scenario, the female stranger was well-dressed, polite in manner, and apparently owned a late-model, well-maintained automobile. The appearance and situation of the female stranger requesting assistance was intended to reflect membership in an upper-middle class socioeconomic classification. In a second assistance-soliciting scenario, the female stranger was dressed in denim trousers, dirty tennis shoes, flannel shirt (not tucked in), and a denim jacket that

Category: Psychology - G