HOPEFUL: Helping Others Promotes Engagement and Fulfillment

Abstract

It is important to know how helping affects helpers and sustains ongoing helping, for if helping is burdensome and derails further helping, society suffers. We propose the HOPEFUL [Helping Other (Groups) Promotes Engagement and FULfillment] model of intergroup helping in which helping between groups leads to individual and social-psychological changes in helpers, which both sustain further helping commitment. In the model, helping increases self-efficacy and psychological well-being, which lead to benevolent support. Increased self-efficacy boosts psychological well-being. Helping increases hope, which, along with the group-based effects of social identification and collective efficacy, promote social change activism. Most importantly, HOPEFUL envisages ways for disadvantaged people and groups to be involved in helping without necessarily undermining progress towards equality.