Influence of a model's feeling about his behavior and his relevance as a comparison other on observers' helping behavior.

Abstract

Collected data unobtrusively from 105 pedestrians in midtown Manhattan. By chance, these people came upon an open envelope, from which was protruding a man's wallet obviously containing money. Wrapped around the wallet was a letter addressed to the wallet's owner, describing a previous finder's feelings about returning the wallet. When the previous finder (social model) was not characterized as being dissimilar from the subject, a letter reporting positive feelings on his part about returning the wallet produced a greater number of completely intact returns than a letter reporting negative feelings. If the model was dissimilar, the feelings of the previous finder produced no differences in the number of intact wallets returned. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)