Effects of Future Dependence, Liking, and Repeated Requests for Help on Helping Behavior

The joint effect on helping behavior of liking and dependence on anotherforfuture rewards was examined. It was hypothesized that future dependence produces more helping behavior between people who like one another than between people who dislike one another. This hypothesis was derived from the Pruitt and Kimmel (1977) goallexpectation theory, a theory developed to interpret certain findings about cooperation in the prisonet's dilemma game. The hypothesis was supported. For people who liked one another, future dependence led to more time spent helping and a greater amount of help than no future dependence. For people who disliked one another, helping was low regardless of the extent of future dependence. In addition, the amount of help given the other increased across trials only for those subjects who were dependent on the other for later help. The Pruitt and Kimmel theory explains the low level of helping in the conditions where the other was disliked as due to a lack of trust that the other would reciprocate.