School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2021 Jul;60(3):870-887. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12429. Epub 2020 Dec 5.
From mundane acts like lending a hand to high-stakes incidents like calling an ambulance, help is a ubiquitous part of the human experience. Social relations shape who we help and how. This paper presents a discursive psychology study of an understudied form of help - seeking help for others. Drawing on a corpus of recorded calls to a victim support helpline, I analysed how social relations were demonstrably relevant when callers sought help for others. I used membership categorization analysis and sequential conversation analysis to document how participants used categories to build and interpret requests for help on behalf of others. Categorical relationships between help-seekers, help-recipients, and potential help-providers were consequential in determining whether callers' requests were justified and if help could be provided. The findings show that different categorical relationships configured seeking help for others as a matter of entitlement, obligation, or opportunity. Analysing the categories participants use in naturally occurring social interaction provides an emic perspective on seeking help for others. This kind of help-seeking offers a fruitful area for discursive psychology to develop new conceptualizations of help and social relations.
从平凡的行为，如伸出援手，到高风险的事件，如叫救护车，帮助是人类经验中无处不在的一部分。社会关系塑造了我们帮助的对象和方式。本文介绍了一项关于帮助的未被充分研究的形式的话语心理学研究——为他人寻求帮助。本文利用受害者支持热线的记录通话语料库，分析了当呼叫者为他人寻求帮助时，社会关系如何明显相关。本文使用成员分类分析和连续会话分析来记录参与者如何使用类别来构建和解释代表他人的求助请求。帮助寻求者、帮助接受者和潜在帮助提供者之间的类别关系对于确定呼叫者的请求是否合理以及是否可以提供帮助具有重要意义。研究结果表明，不同的类别关系将为他人寻求帮助配置为权利、义务或机会的问题。分析参与者在自然发生的社会互动中使用的类别，为为他人寻求帮助提供了一种本土视角。这种帮助寻求为话语心理学提供了一个富有成效的领域，以发展帮助和社会关系的新概念化。
