Hero Homework #8

 Asking for Help

I’ll tell you right up front, this is a hard one for me. Bad history. 

As a rule, I’d rather bleed to death than ask for a band-aid. I’m greatly disinclined to give an enemy the satisfaction of hearing me beg for mercy. Doesn’t matter whether that enemy is a particular individual, or just a situation. That’s a chink in my armor, and I know it.  I’m working on it.

Asking for help may sound simple. But it’s not an innate ability at which all people excel. Asking for help is a skill that can be developed through practice. Everyone differs in the situations in which they feel comfortable asking for help.

This exercise encourages you to step outside of your comfort zone – almost always a good thing, in itself -- and ask for help in situations where you would normally avoid doing so. 

In two experiments, social psychologist Tom Moriarity (1) demonstrated the importance of asking for help in order for observers to feel personally responsible for your well-being. In the first experiment, New Yorkers watched as a thief snatched a woman's suitcase in a restaurant, when she left her table. 

In the second, they watched a thief grab a portable radio from a beach blanket, when the owner left it for a few minutes. In each experiment, the would-be victim (the experimenter's accomplice) had first asked the soon-to-be observer of the crime either "Do you have the time?" or "will you please keep an eye on my bag/radio while I'm gone?" 

Asking for the time elicited no personal responsibility and almost all of the bystanders stood idly by as the thief took off. However, of the people who had agreed to watch the victim's property, almost every bystander intervened. They called for help, and some even tackled the runaway thief on the beach!

The encouraging message is that we can often convert apathy to action and transform callousness to kindness just by asking for it. The mere act of requesting a favor forges a special human bond that involves other people in ways that materially change the situation. It makes them feel responsible to you and thereby responsible for what happens in your shared social world.

 -aac

adapted from the Heroic Imagination Project

(1) Moriarity, T. (19975) Crime, commitment, and the responsive bystander: Two field experiments.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31, 370-376