Recipient reactions to aid.
Abstract
This article presents a comprehensive review of research and theory on reactions to help, organized in terms of four conceptual orientations (i.e., equity, attribution, reactance, and threat to self-esteem). For each orientation, the basic assumptions and predictions are discussed, supportive and nonsupportive data are reviewed, and an overall appraisal is offered. Threat to self-esteem is proposed as an organizing construct for research on reactions to help, and a model based on this construct is presented. It is argued that a formalized threat-to-self-esteem model is more comprehensive and parsimonious for predicting reactions to help than are equity, attribution, or reactance models.
Cites (5)
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- The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statementGouldner, Alvin W. · 1960 · American Sociological Review
- Inequity In Social ExchangeAdams, J. Stacy · 1965 · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
- From acts to dispositions the attribution process in person perceptionJones, Edward E., Davis, Keith E. · 1965 · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
- New directions in equity research.Walster, Elaine, Berscheid, Ellen, Walster, G. William · 1973 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Cited by (20)
- Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesisCohen, Sheldon, Wills, Thomas A. · 1985 · Psychological Bulletin
- Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seekingAddis, Michael E., Mahalik, James R. · 2003 · American Psychologist
- Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events – the mobilization minimization hypothesis.Taylor, Shelley E. · 1991 · Psychological Bulletin
- Theory and research concerning social comparisons of personal attributesWood, Joanne V. · 1989 · Psychological Bulletin
- Is gratitude a moral affect?McCullough, Michael E., Kilpatrick, Shelley D., Emmons, Robert A., Larson, David B. · 2001 · Psychological Bulletin
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Recipient reactions to aid. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0033-2909.91.1.27
- The paper
- Fisher, J. D., Nadler, A., & Whitcher, S. J. (1982). Recipient reactions to aid. Psychological Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-2909.91.1.27
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.