This research investigated the motives behind helping and exploitive behaviors from the perspective of the Equity with the World (EwW) hypothesis, which claims that people will maintain equity in trans-relational relationships. It was hypothesized that (a) people redress inequity even from third parties, and (b) in comparison with monetary issues, when the exchange resource involves helping out, over-rewarded people offer more resources to others, while the under-rewarded are less likely to exploit others. In addition, (c) people redress inequity more strongly with interested parties. A total of 343 college students completed a questionnaire that contained two hypothetical situations. In each of these situations, respondents were initially either given resources, or had resources exploited from them, and were then asked about subsequent situations. The evaluation of the first interaction and their intent toward offering resources to third parties were assessed. The results generally supported the hypotheses. However, the second hypothesis was not supported. They were less exploitive when they were under-rewarded regarding money allocation. Differences in the method of restoring inequity regarding the resources were discussed in terms of generalized exchange.
