Test shows people are less likely to make the effort of helping others

A new task developed by researchers led to them finding out that people tend to put in little effort to help others. Their discovery could help scientists better understand why some people are less motivated to help others – a trait characteristic of apathetic or psychopathic individuals.

The Oxford University scientists asked people to make lots of decisions between ‘working’ and ‘resting’. If they rested they would only earn a small amount of money, and if they worked they could earn more money, but they would have to put in more effort by squeezing a handheld device to different levels of difficulty. Sometimes they had to make these decisions to earn money for themselves. At other times, they did it to earn money for a stranger.

“Lots of our social interactions require us to put in effort. From holding open a door, to helping a colleague out with their work. However, what we didn’t know was just how much effort people will put in when helping someone else, who is a complete stranger. What is striking is that we can measure people’s willingness to do this using our new task and see how it relates to how apathetic or psychopathic people are,” first author Dr. Patricia Lockwood of Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology, explained.

In order to find the answer to the question, the Oxford researchers measured how often people were willing to work – for themselves or for others – and how much energy they put in.

The results showed that if little effort was required, people were almost as willing to choose to work to benefit themselves and others. Things changed however when the action required a lot of effort. People were much less likely to choose to do it and, most strikingly, even if they did chose to help the other person, they were rather superficial – they put in less energy to help someone else than themselves.

Senior author, Dr. Matthew Apps from the Department of Experimental Psychology, adds: ‘We often like to think of ourselves as sociable and willing to help other people out, but previous research has been very mixed on this issue.

“People are very prosocial when it comes to avoiding physical harm to others, but less so when it comes to giving up money. What we show is that when it comes to putting in effort to help other people, unfortunately, many of us are rather apathetic,” Dr. Matthew Apps, from the Department of Experimental Psychology, senior author, said.

On the bright side, the task offers new ways for scientists to look at disorders of motivation in clinical conditions. This could help them understand more about the roots of antisocial behaviours.