Effects of mood and self-awareness on an individual's helping behavior

Abstract

This experimental research was conducted among student participants in the University to determine whether the differences in mood together with self-awareness can increase or decrease a person's helping behavior. It was also the aim of the researcher to find out if there are significant main effects on Mood and in Self-awareness towards helping. Participants were induced in a positive, neutral, or negative mood using articles having happy content, neither happy nor sad content, and sad content, respectively. On the other hand, self-awareness was measured using the mirror procedure. A brief mood questionnaire determined the story's effectiveness on the participant's affect. Using the Analysis of Variance and Tukey’s HSD test, with a computed F at .05 level of significance, results indicated that the main effect and interaction effect of mood and self-awareness produced a significant increase, as well as a significant decrease, in the participant’s expended effort to aid the researcher. Positive mood operated with self-awareness in increasing the participant's helping behavior to aid a person, while negative mood operated with self-awareness in decreasing their motivation to help. Having a positive feeling is viewed to be more inclined in giving assistance to those in need than those having bad feelings. More so when it makes a person aware that it feels good to give such aid. This study on mood and self-awareness confirmed that our emotions do affect behavior in helping others. Specifically, these determinants showed that being helpful may vary as a result of how a person feels at the moment and how consciously aware they are of themselves in a given situation.