Demand characteristics, moods, and helping

Procedures used in empathy-helping studies suggest that results may be due to demand characteristics. Two studies were run to investigate especially the mood induction process. The first reproduced the Aderman-Berkowitz (1970) main mood effects. The second showed that after seeing a help-nonhelp incident, mood effects could be demonstrated only when Ss knew the purpose of the research, thus supporting the demand characteristics hypothesis. As predicted, awareness did not interact with Ss' helping behavior. The most helpful Ss were those who attended to the young woman-in-need-of-help when she was helped.