Gender-related patterns of helping among friends

in this study, the social role theory of gender and helping (Eagly & Crowle y, 1986) was applied to understand gender differences in helping behavior. Relationships among criterion Variables of time spent helping and help qual ity; and key predictors of problem severity, empathic tendency, anger, symp athy, closeness, causal controllability, coping, and self-efficacy were app lied. Participants from a large community sample (N = 1,004) described situ ations in which they helped a friend and completed questionnaires describin g factors that influenced their actions. Recipients of the help also filled out similar questionnaires. It was found that across many problem settings women spend more time helping, give higher quality help, and feel more emp athy and sympathy in response to their friends' problems. Further, the pres ence of anger toward a friend is associated with more time spent helping bu t a lower quality of help. in contrast, men rate their friends' problems as more controllable/blameworthy and experience more anger. Further, controll ability has a greater influence on a number of help-related variables. For both men and women, self-efficacy and perception of problem severity are th e greatest direct predictors of helping.