THE MEDIATING EFFECTS OF JUSTIFICATION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRIOR AND SUBSEQUENT HELPING OF A DISABLED OTHER.
Item
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Title
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THE MEDIATING EFFECTS OF JUSTIFICATION ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRIOR AND SUBSEQUENT HELPING OF A DISABLED OTHER.
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Identifier
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AAI8023746
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identifier
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8023746
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Creator
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FARBER, JOAN ELIZABETH.
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Contributor
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Irwin Katz | David C. Glass
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Date
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1980
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Social
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Abstract
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The "foot-in-the-door" phenomenon (Freedman & Fraser, 1966) is a method of increasing the likelihood of compliance with a request for help by first inducing compliance with a smaller request. The present study tested the hypothesis that the amount of justification provided for performing the initial favor affects the degree to which the likelihood of subsequent helping is increased. Specifically, it was predicted that the increased likelihood of subsequent helping should occur only when no external justification is provided for the initial favor. When external justification is provided for the initial favor, subsequent willingness to help should be no greater than if no initial favor was performed.;The effect of the help-seeker's physical characteristics on the relationship between prior and subsequent helping was also investigated. According to ambivalence-amplification theory (Katz & Glass, 1979), attitudes toward the physically disabled are ambivalent. Behavior toward a disabled other which contradicts either the positive or negative component of ambivalent feelings arouses conflict which may be resolved by either denying or defending the discredited attitude. This in turn can lead to subsequent reactions of a more extreme nature than if the initial act had been done for an unambivalently-viewed, i.e., nondisabled, other.;Subjects were induced to perform a boring task under one of the following conditions: (a) as part of their paid service in an experiment, (b) as a favor for which they later received strong external justification, or (c) as a favor for which they received no justification. The stimulus person who made this request appeared to be either: (a) normal or (b) physically disabled. Responses to a subsequent request for a personal favor constituted the main dependent measure.;Only subjects who did the task as a favor with no justification offered more subsequent help than did those who had simply been required to perform the task. This essentially confirmed the prediction regarding the effects of justification on the relationship between prior and subsequent helping. Furthermore, the relevance of this finding to the issue of the timing of justification manipulations in dissonance paradigms was discussed.;The help-seeker's physical characteristics did not affect later helping. However, subjects who received no justification for having done the favor tended to deny the uniqueness of their action or that they had done a favor at all, and there was strong evidence that these subjects denied that the initial task had been boring. Therefore, an additional condition was tested in which subjects who performed the initial favor, while receiving no justification, were reminded that they had done a favor and that the task had been a boring one. Under this condition of no justification, an additional pattern emerged: subjects who had performed the initial task as a favor for the disabled stimulus person without justification tended to offer more subsequent help than did subjects who had done the favor for the normal stimulus person. This pattern corresponded more closely to the prediction derived from ambivalence-amplification theory.;These findings were interpreted as reflecting a tendency, whenever possible, to reduce the conflict aroused by having freely performed a favor for an ambivalently-viewed, i.e., disabled, help-seeker through denial of the favor itself or its uniqueness and/or a re-evaluation of the task's appeal, rather than through modification of one's reactions to the help-seeker. When the opportunity to engage in such denial was minimized, there was a greater tendency for amplified helpfulness to appear.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Psychology
