Effects of stress and commonality of fate on helping behavior

An experiment was performed in order to examine the joint effects of stress and commonality of fate on helping behavior. In a 2 times 2 factorial design, subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in which (a) the subject and a confederate are both awaiting an experiment involving electric shock (high stress-common fate); (b) the subject is awaiting an experiment involving electric shock while the confederate is awaiting an innocuous word association experiment (high stress-dissimilar fate); (c) the subject is awaiting the word association experiment while the confederate awaits shock (low stress-dissimilar fate); and (d) the subject and the confederate are both awaiting an innocuous word association experiment (low stress-common fate). As predicted, a significant interaction, p less than .01, was obtained, indicating that high stress, as compared to low stress, facilitates helping if the potential recipient is in the same stressful situation but inhibits helping if the potential recipient is in a dissimilar and less stressful situation.