Effects of helping imagination on helping intentions:

A comparative study of nonverbal and verbal stimuli

Abstract

This study compared the intent to help in response to nonverbal and verbal stimuli that described people in need of help to clarify the conditions and generality of effects that promote the intent to help. Participants were randomly assigned to a help-imagining group, a no-help imagining group, or a control group. In Study 1, the participants evaluated verbal stimuli. In Study 2, they evaluated visual stimuli as illustrations developed for this study. The results of both studies indicated that the group imagining they were helping scored significantly higher for the intent to help than the other two groups, suggesting that improving imagination about helping increased helpful intentions, regardless of the stimuli type. Also, we found that different aspects of different stimuli affected the intent to help: the effect of evaluating the recipient’s emotional state on the intent to help was only observed for visual stimuli, and visual stimuli compared to verbal stimuli, were less likely to influence an individual’s imagination and past experience on the intent to help.