Date of Award

1993

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

This study investigated cross-racial helping behavior of college students. The subject pool consisted of 160 undergraduate students (40 Black women, 40 Black men, 40 White women, 40 White men) from a predominately White, midwestern university. The format of the study involved the solicitation of help by either a Black or a White graduate student in need of assistance with a research project. Following a brief distractor exercise, the graduate student (help seeker) asked subjects how much further time they would be willing to commit to the research project. In order to minimize the effects of social desirability, subjects were asked to volunteer their assistance in an anonymous manner. The number of minutes of help offered to the help seeker was the dependent variable investigated. Overall, 37 of the 106 subjects (23%) offered help to the help seeker, the remaining 123 (77%) refused to offer any assistance. The mean number of minutes of help ranged from 4.50 minutes offered by both the Black male and Black female subjects to the White help seeker, to 13.25 minutes offered by the Black female subjects to the Black help seeker. Although a three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the number of minutes of help offered failed to produce significant results, supplemental post-hoc analyses in the form of empirical trends and chi square analyses yielded interesting findings about cross-racial helping behavior.

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