The relationship between achievement orientedness and helping behaviour.

Abstract

Participants assigned to a competitive, self-competitive or non-competitive condition were given five minutes to play a computer game while faced with an opportunity to help a confederate. Results indicated that individuals who obtained high achievement orientedness scores were less likely to help than individuals who obtained low achievement orientedness scores, but only in the competitive condition. In the self-competitive and non-competitive conditions, there was no significant difference in the likelihood of helping for participants who were high on achievement orientedness and for participants who were low on achievement orientedness. It was also found that neither dispositional achievement orientedness nor situational achievement orientedness alone was a significant predictor of the likelihood to help. These results show support for the disposition-situation interaction approach to predicting helping behaviour.