Helping norms in relation to religious affiliation

The authors used vignettes to solicit each participant's estimate of the li kelihood of help and his/her recommendation for or against helping a studen t who needed to borrow another student's class notes. The study had a 2 (Hi ndu vs. Muslim participant) x 2 (participant's gender) x 2 (liking vs. disl iking relationship) x 2 (justified vs. unjustified need for help) x 2 (low vs. high cost of helping) factorial design with 15 participants per cell. E stimated likelihood of help was higher among the female than among the mate participants, with the liking than with the disliking relationship, and wi th the low rather than with the high cost of helping. The Hindu participant s gave lower estimates of the likelihood of help than did the Muslim partic ipants with the disliking relationship and with the unjustified need for he lp. Intracommunal helping, irrespective of contextual variations, may have been a stronger social norm for the Muslim than for the Hindu participants, probably because of the former's minority status in India and, more import ant, the Islamic prescription of communal brotherhood. Even though both com munities are deemed collectivist, the Indian Muslim participants' helping n orms appeared to be more obligation oriented and less option oriented than those of the Indian Hindu participants.