Abstract

NUNAN, Adriana  and  JABLONSKI, Bernardo. Pro-Social behavior using the lostlLetter technique: Are there parking spaces for altruism in university parking lots. Psicol. pesq. [online]. 2009, vol.3, n.1, pp. 47-58. ISSN 1982-1247.

The present study had the goal of evaluating helping behavior between university populations using the lost-letter technique. Our initial hypothesis was that women would receive more help than men, which would, in turn, be more helped than homosexuals. With this objective, a request for help (made by a heterosexual male, by a heterosexual female or by a homosexual male) was placed in the windshields of cars in university parking lots in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Niteroi, summing up a total of 102 letters. A similar research developed in Brasília (Silva et al., 1998) was used as basis. We obtained a low return rate of the lost-letters (16.7%), which suggests a non-expressive degree of prosocial behavior. Also, we were unable to find differences in response rates between regions (areas in the city) or among groups of supposed authors of the letters. An analysis of the reasons why such results were obtained is presented at the end of the paper.

Keywords : Prosocial behavior; Lost-letter; University students; Attitudes.

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