The Effects of Effort on Helping the Physically Disabled

Interactions with physically disabled people often elicit both the desire to avoid the stigmatized and dependent person and feelings of responsibility to help the disadvantaged. This study examined the effort required to help, the helper's gender, and the help received by disabled and nondisabled confederates in searching for a lost object. One confederate was actually disabled and totally dependent on others for completing the helping task, but the other confederate was not disabled. Results indicated a significant interaction of effort and confederates' level of ability. Post hoc tests indicated no differences in helping disabled and nondisabled confederates in the low-effort condition, but, in the high-effort condition, the disabled confederate received significantly more help. These findings suggest that when costs of helping were low, decisions about helping each confederate did not appear to differ; but when costs were high, feelings of social responsibility outweighed both the additional effort involved and tendencies for avoidance in decisions to help the disabled confederate.