Abstract
It is important to determine when helpful behavior is likely to occur. The present experiment studied the effects of gender, urgency, and location on altruistic behavior. 64 phone calls were made by a woman who said her car had broken down and asked the person reached to call a number located either within or outside the person's calling district. Half of the callers said that this was her last dime (high urgency) and half that she had no more change (low urgency). 64 phone calls were made in a similar manner by male experimenters. The design of the experiment was a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial. All three main effects were significant. Women received assistance more rapidly than men; those with no money were helped more rapidly; and those asking for calls within the district were helped more quickly. Factors which facilitated altruism include amount of need, similarity to the person in need, and cost to the helper.
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