Niiya Yu, Yakin Syamil, Park Lora E, Chang Ya-Hui
Department and Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies, Hosei University, Ichigaya Campus, Tokyo 102-8160, Japan.
Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
Eur J Investig Health Psychol Educ. 2025 May 21;15(5):90. doi: 10.3390/ejihpe15050090.
People are less likely to help others when they view time as a scarce resource. Does changing people's of time influence their willingness to help? We hypothesized that people would be more willing to help and would allocate more time to helping others when they view time as a resource (i.e., as a resource that merely exists or that can be created moment-by-moment with their interactions with others) versus a resource (i.e., a commodity that can be lost, taken, or given away). Study 1 measured people's perception of time and their willingness to help in hypothetical vignettes. Studies 2 and 3 manipulated the perception of time to examine its effect on people's willingness to help others and the amount of time they wanted to spend helping. Study 3 further examined prosocial motivation as a potential mediator. Across the three studies, we demonstrated that when people perceive time as a nonzero-sum resource versus a zero-sum resource, people are more willing to help others. People's prosocial motivation to reduce others' distress mediated this relationship. We speculate that when people perceive time to be nonzero-sum, time spent helping others is not viewed as costly, but as a resource to invest in to benefit both themselves and others.
当人们将时间视为一种稀缺资源时，他们帮助他人的可能性就会降低。改变人们对时间的看法会影响他们帮助他人的意愿吗？我们假设，当人们将时间视为一种非零和资源（即一种仅仅存在的资源，或者可以通过与他人的互动时刻创造出来的资源）而不是零和资源（即一种可能会丢失、被拿走或赠送出去的商品）时，他们会更愿意帮助他人，并会分配更多时间去帮助他人。研究1测量了人们在假设情景中对时间的认知以及他们帮助他人的意愿。研究2和研究3操纵了对时间的认知，以检验其对人们帮助他人意愿以及他们想要花费在帮助上的时间量的影响。研究3进一步将亲社会动机作为一个潜在的中介因素进行了考察。在这三项研究中，我们证明，当人们将时间视为非零和资源而不是零和资源时，人们更愿意帮助他人。人们减少他人痛苦的亲社会动机介导了这种关系。我们推测，当人们认为时间是非零和的时候，花时间帮助他人不会被视为代价高昂，而是一种对自己和他人都有益的可投资资源。
