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C Nathan Dewall1, Roy F Baumeister, Matthew T Gailliot
1Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0044, USA. nathan.dewall@uky.edu
Insights
Self-regulation manages conflicts between helping others and selfish impulses. When self-regulatory energy is depleted, people are less willing to help strangers, but this effect is reversed with glucose.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Individuals often experience motivational conflicts between prosocial helping behaviors and selfish impulses.
- Self-regulation is a key cognitive process involved in managing these internal conflicts.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role of self-regulatory energy in modulating prosocial helping behaviors.
- To test the hypothesis that depleted self-regulation reduces willingness to help.
Main Methods:
- Three studies were conducted involving habit breaking, attention control, and glucose consumption.
- Participants' willingness to help in hypothetical scenarios and actual volunteering efforts were measured.
- Self-regulatory depletion was induced through tasks like habit breaking and attention control.
Main Results:
- Depleted self-regulatory energy significantly reduced participants' willingness to help strangers.
- Helping behavior was not affected when the recipient was a family member.
- Providing glucose, a source of energy, counteracted the negative effects of self-regulatory depletion on helping.
Conclusions:
- Helping others, especially strangers, requires substantial self-regulatory energy to overcome selfish impulses.
- Maintaining self-regulatory capacity is crucial for prosocial behavior.
- Energy replenishment, such as through glucose, can restore the capacity for helping when depleted.
Abstract:
Often people are faced with conflict between prosocial motivations for helping and selfish impulses that favor not helping. Three studies tested the hypothesis that self-regulation is useful for managing such motivational conflicts. In each study, depleted self-regulatory energy reduced willingness to help others. Participants who broke a habit, relative to participants who followed a habit, later reported reduced willingness to help in hypothetical scenarios (e.g., donating food or money; Studies 1 and 3). Controlling attention while watching a video, relative to watching it normally, reduced volunteering efforts to help a victim of a recent tragedy- but drinking a glucose drink undid this effect (Study 2). Depleted energy reduced helping toward strangers but it did not reduce helping toward family members (Study 3). Helping requires self-regulatory energy to manage conflict between selfish and prosocial motivations-a metabolically expensive process-and thus depleted energy reduces helping and increased energy (glucose) increases helping.
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