Coming to understand the processes involved in giving and accepting aid is central to understanding social relationships. To date considerable literature has accumulated identifying determinants of whether and when a person will give aid to another and a smaller amount has accumulated identifying determinants of people's reactions to receiving aid. However, there are notable gaps in this literature. Almost no research exists aimed at identifying how potential donors of aid react to having provided (or having failed to provide) aid. Moreover, what research does exist on reactions to receiving and to providing aid has failed to consider how the type of relationship that exists or is desired between the donor and the recipient might mediate reactions to receiving and to having provided help. This research will begin to fill in these gaps. Two studies will examine reactions to receiving aid. In the first, people will be led to expect either a "communal" relationship (e.g. a friendship) or an "exchange relationship (e.g. a business-like relationship) with a potential donor of aid. Then they will or will not receive aid. Finally their mood states and self- evaluations will be assessed. In the second, people who naturally vary in their chronic levels of communal and exchange orientation toward relationships will either receive aid or not. Then, as in the first study, their mood and self-evaluations will be assessed. It is predicted that moods and self-evaluations will improve as a result of receiving aid when a communal relationship is desired or expected but will remain the same or even deteriorate when an exchange relationship is desired or expected. The third and fourth studies will assess reactions to having provided aid to another. In the third, people will be led to expect either a communal or an exhange relationship with another and they either will or will not be induced to provide aid to that other. Then their mood states and self-evaluations will be assessed. In the fourth, people who naturally vary in communal and exchange orientation will or will not be induced provide aid to another. Then their moods and self-evaluations will be assessed. It is expected that regardless of relationship type people's self-evaluations will improve as a result of having helped another. However, moods are expected to improve only if a communal relationship is expected or desired. This work will expand our currently scarce knowledge of reactions to receiving and providing aid. It should also reveal that expected relationship type is an extremely important moderator of these reactions. The latter contribution is viewed as very important since, although we have long known that most help is given and received within the context of friendships and family relationships (i.e. relationships that tend to be communal in nature), most social psychological work on the helping process has focused on helping that takes place between strangers. The research will also expand our knowledge about relationship types and individual differences in relationship orientation-areas of research that are just beginning to blossom. Finally, gaining an understanding of what types of persons and what types of situations are associatd with the most positive reations to providing and to receiving aid may have a very practical payoff. In may better enable us to recruit volunteers for helping projects as well as to better design ways of aiding the needy without eliciting resentment.
