The Effects of Effort and Stigma on Helping

Summary

A “bystander invervention” paradigm was employed to test the effects of type of person (stigmatized vs nonstigmatized) and the costs of helping (high vs low effort) on the helping behavior of 200 Canadian men and women standing on subway platforms. As predicted, there were no differences in the help given to the stigmatized and the nonstigmatized in the low effort condition, but the stigmatized were less likely to be helped than the nonstigmatized in the high effort condition (p < .05). The results were explained by an assumption that the desire to avoid the stigmatized heightens a person's sensitivity to alterations in the cost of helping. It is proposed that an increase in the cost of helping is “amplified” by the presence of a stigmatized other, but in the presence of a nonstigmatized other a person is less attentive to a modest increase in costs.