Adolescents' evaluations of Peers' motives for helping

Four groups of high-school students (N=92) were each informed about a pair of helpers, either male or female, who independently helped a sameor opposite-sex peer. Within each pair of same-sex helpers, one was presented as having helped for empathic reasons and the other was presented as having helped for nonempathic reasons. The adolescents' ratings of the helpers indicated that they generally favored empathically motivated helping in both male and female peers. However, a female helper who did not express sensitivity and emotional responsiveness to the feelings of the needy other in her prosocial moral reasoning tended to be judged more harshly by the adolescents than did a male helper who failed to express such sentiments.Received Ph. D. from Northwestern University. Research interests include empathy and prosocial behavior.All received B.S. in psychology from Kansas State University in 1987.