The Effects of Onlooker Gender and Restrictive Emotionality on Help-Seeking Behavior

Abstract

Endorsing traits associated with masculinity, such as restrictive emotionality (RE), may have negative implications for the health and well-being of both male and female identified individuals, specifically in terms of help-seeking. The current work examined whether gender of an onlooker (i.e., a coworker) impacted participants self-reported likelihood to seek help for a physical injury in the workplace. We also investigated if RE moderated the relationship between onlooker gender and intent to seek help. We hypothesized that participants would be more likely to seek help from a female (vs. male) identified coworker and that this anticipated effect would be exacerbated for those relatively high in endorsement of RE. Participants (n = 129) were recruited online to engage in a study where they self-reported likelihood to seek help from a male or female coworker when experiencing various injury symptoms at work and their RE. Our results provided support for only one of our primary hypotheses: as RE increased, intent to seek help decreased. Auxiliary analyses revealed that female identified participants were significantly more likely to seek help from a female onlooker than a male onlooker, whereas male identified participants were equally likely to seek help from females and males. These results suggest that RE may be associated with maladaptive help-seeking behavior and that participant gender and onlooker gender may interact to inform help-seeking with practical implications for developing interventions to encourage help-seeking.