Moving Toward Helping Behavior: The Roles of Sympathy, Helping Goal Attainability, and Locomotion Orientation

Abstract Why do some people help others in need, and some do not? One potential answer is sympathy, which reflects an other-focused desire to help others in need. Consequentially, we posit that sympathy toward a specific target joined with the attainability of successful helping forms a helping goal. In three experiments we found that helping behavior was highest when a helping goal was present, although there was a level of superficial helping when sympathy was high but attainability low. Moreover, locomotion mode, or the tendency to move forward, was associated with a higher importance placed on attainability.