Helping others can improve ones self esteem

Helping others can improve ones self-esteem,

and the participants performance.
Ubdasja Calixte
Shaima Al Majed
Rawan Alabbas
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Helping others can improve ones self esteem

Introduction:

The movie Pay it Forward played a major role on the topic chosen for this social experiment. The
major purpose of this experiment is to see if helping others benefits the helper. The way in which this
experiment will be implemented is through conducting tutorials with college students who are struggling
in a particular course. Group study, a form of tutoring, is an excellent strategy to help others who are
struggling with their studies. For example, it can allow the tutors to teach difficult materials and share
their talents with the participants.
The cause for helping others varies because each person has different motives for why they
choose to help someone. According to Albert (2000), there are three different motives for helping others:
the first is altruistic motives such as personal value of right and wrong, which can influence a person to
help another person. The second is instrumental motives, which is to enhance ones overall image, and the
third is intrinsic motives, which is genuine helping behavior much like the parable of good Samaritan (as
cited in Li-Ping Tang et. al, 2008, p. 868). A study shows that helping others makes the helper happy. It
said, "People who volunteer tend to have higher self-esteem, psychological well-being, and happiness,"
Snyder says, "All of these things go up as their feelings of social connectedness goes up, which in reality,
it does. It also improves their health and even their longevity" (Moeller, 2012). Helping others can have
many positive effects. With reference to Aristotle, it is claimed that true happiness is to be found in the
expression of virtue; a happy person is therefore a moral person(Meier & Stutzer 2008).

Helping others can improve ones self esteem

Methods Section:

I. Participants
The experimental goal is to see the progress of college students after given them tutorials. The first
college student is an electrical engineering major, and needed help in his chemistry class. The second one
is majoring in finance, his problem was not having any notes for calculus class and his average score was
low, which might be influenced on his final grade. The last participant is a pre-kinesiology major, and the
student had difficulties grasping concepts in his college algebra course.

II. Measures
A survey will be given to each participant, to compare their grades before and after giving them tutorials.
The survey will have two parts, the first one is to test the information that each participant has learned,
and the second part will have several questions on the experiment. Also, a table will be attached to the
final report, which summarize the results. It will be similar to table 1.

Grades before tutorials

Quizzes grades during tutorial

Grades after tutorials

III. Procedure
Several steps were done throughout this experiment. Firstly, each tutor established a schedule for when
they can meet the participants. Afterwards, each of the participants were given a pretest to assess their
current skills. Then, the tutors would evaluate the weaknesses of each participant. They would start
teaching the certain skills that each participant needed help with, then give each participant a quiz to

Helping others can improve ones self esteem

check for understanding. After the brief session, the tutors would write reflective summaries of each
encounter with the participants.

Results:
The results of this experiment were as expected. Each participant has improved greatly in his course. Over
the course of two weeks, each tutor met with his or her participants 4 times. During each meeting, notes
and quizzes were provided to each participant in order to explain everything to him or her clearly.

First Participant Results

The first participant was struggling in his chemistry class. Four meetings were done with him. In each
meeting a chapter was explained. However, in the last meeting, we discussed all the chapters and a quiz
was given to him.

Before

After

- He was not able to name the chemical

- He can name any compound

compounds.
- His grades in chemistry smart work were

- For the last two weeks, he got 92, 98 in

in the 70s and 80s

his smart work assignments

- He got 71 in his last quiz

- He got 88 after the tutorials

The second participant was struggling in his Algebra class.

Before

After

He couldnt give the equation of

He understood how to determine equations

polynomials from a graph. He needed help

of a polynomial, solve problems that had to

Helping others can improve ones self esteem

with inverse and direct equations. He

do with direct and indirect equations.

couldnt determine possible factors for a

Lastly, he knows how to determine factors

polynomial

of a polynomial using Descartess rule.

His last quiz grade was in the 60s and 70s

After the tutorial, he got an 80 and 85 on

range

both quizzes.

Before he didnt complete many problems

Afterwards, he was able to solve many

on webwork

problems on webwork after learning the

concepts. He got 100 % and 85% on his
webwork assignments.

Abduallh was the third participant; it had an average of 60 in his Pre-Calculus class and he does not have
notes or books to study. Abdullah was disappointed and he will not be able to pass this course if he does
not take a grade in the eighties.

Before

After

He did not have anything to study from it

He has notes and quizzes

His average grade for the webwork was in

His grades for the last two webwork were

the 60s

90 and 98

In the first quiz that was given to him, he

He took a test that was required to pass his

did very badly and he got 20 out of a

class, and he got 89 out of 100

hundred

Discussion:
From doing this experiment we learned that doing tutorials not only benefits participates, but also the

Helping others can improve ones self esteem

tutors. Each tutor can improve their teaching skills, and retain the information they teach while the
participants can continue having good grades in their class, and follow the concepts their tutors have
taught them.
Perhaps in the future, participants can use the information they learned to teach others who have trouble
in the same subject. Seeing the participants succeed in their academic career was very thrilling for each
tutor. It truly gave each tutor a sense of purpose. In addition, it makes them more selfless.

Helping others can improve ones self esteem

Reference

Meier, S., & Stutzer, A. (2008). Is volunteering rewarding in Itself? In Economica (297th ed., Vol. 75, pp.
39-59). Wiley.
Smith, J. (2004). Helping others, helping ourselves: power, giving, and community identity in cleveland,
ohio. Retrieved November 17, 2014, from
: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20174070

Tang, T., Sutarso, T., Davis, G., Dolinski, D., Ibrahim, A., & Wagner, S. (2008, November 1). To
help or not to help? the good samaritan effect and the love of money on
helping behavior. Retrieved November 17, 2014, from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25482334