Severity of Adversity Predicts Lower Costly Helping

Nascent research has found that adversity severity predicts helping behavior. A quasi-experimental, moderation-of-process design was employed to examine whether individuals who have experienced more severe adverse life events will engage more in altruistically motivated helping behaviors. In a virtual setting, participants were offered the opportunity to switch places with an ostensible participant who was visibly distressed by an unpleasant task. Participants were randomized to an easy escape or difficult escape condition. There was no support for this hypothesis, as severity of adversity experienced at the time the adverse events occurred was not associated with helping in an altruistic (or any) context. Instead, the current emotional impact of prior adverse life events (irrespective of when they occurred) was negatively associated with helping behavior. Discussion focuses on the temporal framing of severity of adversity measures and the feasibility of studying altruistic responsiveness in virtual social interactions.