Although men and women help others, there are systematic gender differences in the type of helping they perform. Consistent with traditional gender roles and stereotypes, men typically help in agentic ways, and women typically help in communal ways. Drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Gender Roles Inhibiting Prosociality model predicts that gender stereotypes about gender-inconsistent helping create negative attitudes, restrictive subjective norms, and low self-efficacy that undermine helping intentions, which, in turn, reduce engagement in gender-inconsistent helping contexts. Across three studies (N = 1,355), we find empirical support for the hypothesized model: When asked to imagine engaging in a gender-inconsistent (vs. gender-consistent) helping scenario, participants anticipated feeling worse, expected others to judge them more negatively, and reported decreased self-efficacy beliefs, and these factors predicted lower intentions to engage in gender-inconsistent helping. Critically, behavioral intentions explained some of the variance in gender-inconsistent helping during the following month. Internal meta-analyses of the differences between gender-consistent and -inconsistent helping on attitudes, subjective norms, self-efficacy, and behavioral intentions across studies revealed small-to-medium average effect sizes (ds = 0.16—0.47). These results have the potential to inform interventions aimed at increasing helping in all its forms.

尽管男性和女性都在帮助他人，但他们提供的帮助类型存在系统性的性别差异。与传统的性别角色和刻板印象一致，男性通常以代理方式提供帮助，而女性通常以公共方式提供帮助。借鉴计划行为理论，抑制亲社会性的性别角色模型预测，关于性别不一致的性别刻板印象有助于产生消极态度、限制性主观规范和低自我效能感，从而破坏帮助意图，进而减少对性别的参与-不一致的帮助上下文。在三项研究中（N = 1,355），我们找到了对假设模型的实证支持：当被要求想象参与性别不一致（与性别一致）的帮助场景时，参与者预计感觉更糟，预计其他人对他们的评价更负面，并报告自我降低-效能信念，这些因素预测参与性别不一致帮助的意愿较低。至关重要的是，行为意图解释了下个月性别不一致帮助的一些差异。跨研究对性别一致和不一致帮助在态度、主观规范、自我效能和行为意图方面的差异进行的内部荟萃分析显示，平均效果大小为中小（ds = 0.16—0.47）。这些结果有可能为旨在增加各种形式的帮助的干预措施提供信息。