This study tested the effect of semantically induced thoughts of love on helping behavior. In a natural setting, 253 participants were interviewed and asked to retrieve the memory of a love episode or, in the control condition, a piece of music they loved. They then met another confederate who asked for money. Analysis showed that inducing the idea of love had a significant positive effect on compliance to a request by a male passerby who was asked for help by a female confederate, but not by a female passerby. Theoretical explanations are presented, based on a gender-role expectation hypothesis.

This study tested the effect of semantically-induced thoughts of love on chivalrous helping. A field setting of four hundred and one participants was divided into two groups. One group was interviewed and asked to retrieve the memory of a love episode, and the second group, the control group, was asked to retrieve a piece of music that they love. The two groups encountered another confederate, who inadvertently lost a stack of compact discs when they neared each other. The results demonstrated that participants were more helpful when they were male, when the person in need of help was female, and when they were induced to retrieve the memory of a love episode.Keywords Love . Helping behavior . Sex roles Much of the work on helping behavior has been conducted in laboratory settings, and thus its generalizability to the real world remains unsure. In addition, studies of sex differences and helping behaviors have given contradictory and inconclusive results. Men have been found to help more than women (Guéguen and FischerLokou 2004). Women have been found to help more than men (Bihm et al. 1979). Other studies have shown little or no sex difference (Boice and Goldman 1981; Monk-Turner et al. 2002). Further, individuals of both sexes have been found to help experimenters of the other sex more often than members of their own sex (Basow and Crawley 1982). Men have been found to help women more than men (Rabinowitz et al. 1997), and men have been found to help women more than women do (Wilson and Kennedy 2006). Women have been found to help women more than men do (Bihm et al. 1979). Women have also been found to help both Curr Psychol (

Previous research has shown that exposure to various media is correlated to variations in human behaviour. Exposure to aggressive song lyrics increases aggressive action whereas exposure to songs with prosocial lyrics is associated with prosocial behaviour. An experiment was carried out where 18—20-year-old single female participants were exposed to romantic lyrics or to neutral ones while waiting for the experiment to start. Five minutes later, the participant interacted with a young male confederate in a marketing survey. During a break, the male confederate asked the participant for her phone number. It was found that women previously exposed to romantic lyrics complied with the request more readily than women exposed to the neutral ones. The theoretical implication of our results for the General Learning Model is discussed.