Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Cottrell, Catherine

Keywords

Empathy, Relationships, Gender, Communal Orientation, Exchange Orientation

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

The act of helping another has been shown to provide both short and long-term benefits to the person providing the help, including mood boosts (Gleason, Iida, Bolger, & Shrout, 2013), increased self-esteem, and even lower morbidity (Heisler, Choi, Piette, Rosland, Langa, & Brown, 2012). Within communal and exchange relationships, which are relationships that differ based on giving and receiving of benefits within them, communal orientation has been correlated with increased helping, as well as with empathy (Clark, Powell, Ouelette & Millberg, 1987). My thesis seeks to explore this relationship further- to establish if individuals with communal orientation or exchange orientation are likely to help, in addition to attempting to uncover what types of help these individuals are likely to give. Additionally, I examined the role empathy plays in the helping process, in addition to assessing whether individuals with each relationship orientation will score differently on empathy. The roles of gender and location are assessed in relation to these relationship orientations, empathy and helping as well. Support was found for a majority of my hypotheses-- No correlation between communal and exchange orientation was found, demonstrating their conceptual distinction. Empathy was positively correlated with communal orientation, and general helping scores, as well as financial help and emotional support help. The correlation between empathy and communal orientation illustrates a dynamic interplay between the two variables, although the direction cannot be determined. Since empathy correlated with composite helping scores, as well as financial and emotional support help, the construct proves itself to play a role in helping on a whole, in addition to playing a role in how individuals give different kinds of help. Exchange orientation and empathy were not correlated—this illustrates that the two concepts are unrelated. Communal orientation was also correlated with helping, with practical/time-related help and emotional support help in particular being correlated with communal orientation. This suggests that communal orientation is associated with a variety of helping behaviors, although they are different from those associated with empathy. No correlation was found between exchange orientation, the composite helping score or any of the three subscales of helping; this demonstrates a clear lack of relation between exchange orientation and helping. No gender differences or location differences were found regarding empathy, communal orientation, exchange orientation or helping. My findings contribute to the understanding of communal and exchange orientation, particularly to how they are different when it comes to helping. Additionally, by assessing empathy, I hoped to reveal its importance in the process of helping within these relationships.

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