Does Helping Behavior Cause A Sense Of Relative Deprivation?Analysis Based On Help Type And Personal Status Stability

Helping behavior is one of the most important research topics in social psychology.In the past,researchers have done a lot of research on how to promote helping behavior,in which the logic is that the behavior of helping people is an encouraged behavior.However,the behavior of helping people may sometimes signaled social inequality,given that it makes it evident that helpers have more resources and knowledge than receivers.For instance,giving help to those who are unable to reciprocate may reinforce the fact that the helpers are more capable and more worth of their current status.It is well known that providing dependency-oriented help can increase the dependency of the recipients,while providing autonomy-oriented help increases the autonomy and independence of the recipients.This article addresses the interaction between type of help and status stability on relative deprivation on the receiver's side.It also explored potential mediating and moderating factors between helping behavior and relative deprivation.A 2(type of help:dependency-oriented help vs.autonomy-oriented help)*2(status:stable vs.unstable)between-subjects experimental design was used in both experiments.In first experiment,the subjects were college students.We examined whether receiving different types of help under stable or unstable condition would produce differences in the sense of relative deprivation.The results indicated that under the stable condition,receiving dependency-oriented help would engender a higher sense of relative deprivation than receiving autonomy-oriented help.In contrast,under the unstable condition,the differences in relative deprivation caused by the two types of help behaviors were not significant.The design of second experiment is similar to first experiment,except that it involved adult participants.Moreover,in addition to relative deprivation,we also measured affective responses,salience of inferiority,and perceived intention as three possible mediators,and social dominance orientation(SDO)as a potential moderator.We found the same interaction between type of helping and status stability on relative deprivation as in Study 1.At the same time,inferiority salience served as a significant mediator.However,after controlling for the three possible mediator variables,the direct effect of dependence on relative deprivation was still significant under the stable condition,suggesting that there were other mediators that we did not measure.We did not find a significant moderating effect of SDO between helping behavior and relative deprivation.The results of these experiments provide insight into how helping behavior may lead sense of relative deprivation.Implications,limitations and future directions were discussed.