THE PSYCHOLOGICAL COSTS OF SEEKING HELP FOR FINANCIAL HARDSHIPS

因经济困难寻求帮助的心理成本

• 批准号: 100246
• 负责人: ALEX IMAS
• 金额: $ 2.5万
• 依托单位: CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-09-30 至 2018-09-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/100246
• 关键词: PSYCHOLOGICAL; COSTS; SEEKING; HELP; FINANCIAL

Despite a wealth of evidence on the factors driving the “supply side” of helping—when people give help and why—there is a comparative dearth on the “demand side”—when people ask for help and why. Violating the standard economic assumption of “more resources are preferred to less,” evidence suggests that despite large benefits, services ranging from governmental welfare programs to tutoring programs are vastly underused. The proposed project seeks to explain why people fail to ask for help in the context of social services. Building on work in economics, psychology, and sociology, as well as our own pilot evidence, we hypothesize that in addition to standard economic costs of seeking help (such as time and effort expended on searching for services), there are also potent psychological costs (such as feelings of shame, failure, and indebtedness). These psychological costs, we argue, may be a first-order problem, inhibiting those in need from seeking help for their financial hardships, undermining the effectiveness of welfare policies, and slowing individuals’ escape from poverty.In collaboration with a Pennsylvania social services agency specializing in housing assistance, we propose two studies to examine the role of psychological factors in help-seeking. The first study will identify the extent to which people delay seeking initial help for their financial hardships and what factors contributed to those delays. While correlational, it will provide evidence for the relative importance of a wide range of economic and psychological factors among a demographically diverse population of low-income adults and families.The second study, a randomized controlled trial, will use low-cost, scalable interventions to test the importance of two psychological factors. The population of interest will be people who initially failed to get help with the partner organization due to capacity constraints and are subsequently referred to an external service provider. We will randomize participants into one of three groups (a control group or one of two treatment groups) and test the extent to which different messages affect people’s willingness to follow through on the external referrals. One intervention will test the importance of people wanting to maintain a positive image of themselves, while the other will test the importance of people wanting to conform to social norms of not taking resources out of a system without also contributing to it.In addition to advancing our theoretical understanding of help-seeking and filling a critical gap in the literature, the results of these studies could have large policy implications. Should our hypotheses be upheld, they would suggest that incorporating the psychological costs of help-seeking into welfare policies may be a powerful tool in the fight against poverty. Not only can it increase people’s willingness to seek out potentially life-saving services, it can simultaneously improve psychological outcomes as well, relieving those in need from the painful dilemma of how to trade off their financial and psychological well-being.

尽管有大量的证据证明了帮助的“供给方”的驱动因素人们何时给予帮助以及为什么，但相对而言，“需求方”的驱动因素人们何时寻求帮助以及为什么。与“资源越多越好”的标准经济假设相悖，证据表明，尽管有很大的好处，但从政府福利计划到辅导计划等服务都没有得到充分利用。拟议的项目旨在解释为什么人们不寻求社会服务方面的帮助。基于经济学、心理学和社会学的研究，以及我们自己的试点证据，我们假设，除了寻求帮助的标准经济成本（如寻找服务所花费的时间和精力）外，还有潜在的心理成本（如羞耻感、失败感和负债感）。这些心理成本，我们认为，可能是一个第一顺序的问题，抑制那些需要帮助的人寻求帮助，他们的经济困难，削弱福利政策的有效性，并减缓个人摆脱贫困。在宾夕法尼亚州的社会服务机构专门从事住房援助的合作，我们提出了两项研究，以探讨心理因素在寻求帮助的作用。第一项研究将确定人们在多大程度上延迟寻求经济困难的初步帮助，以及哪些因素导致了这些延迟。虽然相关性，它将提供证据的经济和心理因素的相对重要性，在人口统计学上多样化的低收入成年人和家庭的人口。第二项研究，随机对照试验，将使用低成本，可扩展的干预措施，以测试两个心理因素的重要性。感兴趣的人群将是最初由于能力限制而未能获得伙伴组织帮助，随后被转介给外部服务提供者的人。我们将参与者随机分为三组（对照组或两个治疗组之一），并测试不同的信息在多大程度上影响人们对外部转诊的意愿。一种干预将测试人们想要保持自己的积极形象的重要性，而另一种干预将测试人们想要遵守社会规范的重要性，即不从系统中获取资源，同时也为系统做出贡献。除了推进我们对寻求帮助的理论理解和填补文献中的关键空白之外，这些研究的结果可能具有很大的政策含义。如果我们的假设得到支持，他们将建议将寻求帮助的心理成本纳入福利政策可能是消除贫困的有力工具。它不仅可以提高人们寻求可能挽救生命的服务的意愿，还可以同时改善心理结果，使需要帮助的人摆脱如何权衡其经济和心理健康的痛苦困境。