Helping: The Influence of Anticipated Social Sanctions and Self-Monitoring

A field experiment was conducted to examine the influence of social sanctions and self-monitoring on willingness to help handicapped persons Compared to low self-monitonng individuals, those high in self-monitorlng tendencies were more likely to offer help if told that significant social rewards were attached to the act of helping, but were less likely to help if led to believe that these consequences were weak Implications for research on helping and self-monitonng are considered with particular attention being given to the relationship between social sanctions and self-monitonng The role of egoism and hedonism in helping has been addressed in many theoretical treatments of prosocial behavior At issue is what motivates people to help One approach to this problem is to consider whether the costs and rewards for helping influence decisions to help Evidence indicates that under most conditions the consequences for helping, whether tangible or intangible, do indeed mfluence the likelihood that assistance will be given (Lemer & Meindl, 1981, Piliavin, Dovidio, Gaertner, & Clark, 1981, Schwartz & Howard, 1981, 1982, Staub, 1980) Even so, there are numerous accounts of persons helpmg at great cost to themselves and with little or no personal reward These instances have prompted study of how values such as empathy, self-esteem, and responThis study was funded by a Ball State University Research Grant awarded to the senior author Portions of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the Amencan Psychological Association, Los Angeles August, 1985 We would like to thank Harry Reis, David Shaffer Gwendolen Bamett White, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this pajjer Please address correspwndence to Michael J White in care ofthe Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services Program m Social Psychology, Ball State University, Muncie, IN 47306 Journal of Personality 55 1, March 1987 Copynght © 1987 by Duke University Press CCC 0022-3506/87/$! 50 42 White and Gerstem sibihty influence helping (Rushton, 1980, Staub, 1980) Such values apparently minimize the influence of situation-specific consequences of helping and promote a generalized obligation to help Yet even here, there is evidence that those with "altruistic personalities" are not indifferent to the consequences associated with their behavior (Batson, Bolen, Cross, & Neunnger-Benefiel, 1984) We wish to take a somewhat different approach to what motivates persons to help Rather than examine whether helping is categorically egoistic or whether helping is determined by altruistic personality characteristics, we wish to explore whether some persons are more responsive to the externally imposed costs and rewards associated with helpmg than are others If this is the case, then it follows that some of the vanation m individuals' willingness to help is not necessarily due to altruistic values, but to vanation in responsiveness to specifiable, external consequences for helping The concept of self-monitonng provides a useful starting point in this analysis (Snyder, 1979, 1983) According to self-monitonng theory, behavioral decisions made in social situations are based on (a) situational and interpersonal definitions of behavioral appropriateness, and (b) the actor's awareness of his or her personal values, attitudes, and psychological state Individuals differ, however, in how they use these two types of information Because of their concem for social appropnateness, high self-monitonng individuals "shrewdly and pragmatically tailor their social behavior to fit situational and interpersonal specifications" (Snyder, 1979, p 101) Their attention to situational appropnateness IS such that both the situations within which they act and the persons with whom they interact are chosen to optimize situational benefits (Snyder & Gangestad, 1982, Snyder, Gangestad, & Simpson, 1983, Snyder & Kendzierski, 1982b) Because of this, we presume that these individuals should also attend to the potential for externally conferred social approval or disapproval attached to the act of helping Low self-monitonng individuals, in contrast, are less concemed with situational appropnateness They are inclined to rely on relevant personal values or attitudes to guide their behavior rather than on what will make them "look good" in the situation (Ajzen, Timko, & White, 1982, Gerstein, Ginter, & Graziano, 1985, Snyder & Kendzierski, 1982a, Tunnell, 1980, Zanna, Olson, & Fazio, 1980) As a consequence, these persons should be relatively indifferent or even reactive to the presence of extemal rewards for helping (Batson, Coke, Jasnoski, & Hanson, 1978) Sanctions and Self-Monitonng 43 There are, of course, a vanety of external costs and rewards which can result from helpmg However, social sanctions should be particularly salient consequences for high self-monitonng persons In addition to whatever reinforcement value they might have, normatively based social sanctions carry information concerning what is behaviorally appropnate in a given situation Thepresenceof frowns, snubs and other negative sanctions serves to remind persons in social interaction that they have passed normative boundanes for acceptable behavior Likewise, smiles, praise, and other positive sanctions are elicited by acceptable behavior (Shaffer, 1982) This IS exactly the kind of information high self-monitoring persons are reported to seek (Snyder & Cantor, 1980) By tailoring their behavior to fit these sanctions, high self-monitonng persons should be able to maximize both the appropriateness of their behavior and the potential for social profit How low self-monitoring persons respond to clearly defined social sanctions is less clear Sanctions congruent with their own values may serve to reinforce them and, as a result, increase the likelihood of prescribed behavior On the other hand, sanctions which are not congruent may be ignored or may even decrease motivation to enact a particular behavior This would be especially likely if the sanctions over-prescribed a behavior and, in so doing, minimized the low self-monitonng person's attnbution of his or her behavior to personal values and volition (Deci, 1975) These considerations prompted the following hypotheses In general, we expected that self-monitonng processes would moderate the motivating impact of social sanctions for helping In particular, we hypothesized that high self-monitonng persons would be more likely to help if they were led to believe that strong social sanctions prescribed helping, but would be less likely to help when these sanctions were descnbed as weak We also anticipated that low self-monitoring persons either would be relatively indifferent to social sanctions or would be less likely to help when sanctions were descnbed as strong