Help seeking, self-esteem, and achievement motivation: An attributional analysis

Examined whether people in need will seek help from an available source based on an attributional analysis of when seeking help is experienced as threatening to self-esteem. 48 female undergraduates, given the Achievement Risk Preference Scale, perceived that they were performing poorly on a social judgment task and that available guidelines could help them. Help was sought significantly more (a) when it was reasonable to attribute responsibility for failure externally rather than to the self; (b) when the attributes linked to help seeking were peripheral rather than central to Ss' self-conception (only among Ss with high self-esteem); (c) by Ss with low rather than high self-esteem (only when help seeking reflected on central attributes); and (d) by Ss with low rather than high achievement motivation.