With a little help from my friends: the relational incongruence of benefiting financially from prosocially motivated favors

Abstract

To improve our understanding of how people engage in altruistic behavior, it is important to investigate the motives provided by help recipients and how these motives influence givers' helping behaviors. Method: In the present study we conduct three experiments (total N = 606), exploring how the financial motivation of help recipients can affect givers' helping behaviors. Results and discussion: We find that people like to help others but resent helping those motivated by immediate financial gains. Study 1 shows that the recipient of help influenced the responses of the helpers depending on whether the recipient was making a sales profit from this help or not. An influencing factor was whether the recipient could provide an excuse for making such a profit. Study 2 replicated these findings also in conditions in which other kinds of profits were applied. Study 3 confirmed the results in conditions in which helpers were informed about recipients' financial motives before deciding whether to help.