Why Do We (Sometimes) Resent Help at Work?

We all need a helping hand sometimes. Often, an offer to help feels like a gift and is welcome. But at other times, it can be viewed as intrusive or meddling. New research by University of Washington Foster School of Business Professor of Management Michael Johnson reveals that how help is delivered plays a key role in how it is received. 

Johnson, who teaches in Foster’s Executive MBA program, co-authored “Emotional Signaling: How Helpers’ Emotional Expressions Affect Attributions of Motives, Relationship Quality, and Reciprocation,” a forthcoming paper in the Academy of Management Journal. Johnson partnered with Professor Stephen Lee of Washington State University on the study, which concludes that whether people appreciate help often depends on the motives they believe are behind it.

“We found the emotional signals given by someone when they’re helping are essential,” says Johnson. “When someone helps with prosocial motives, the person receiving the help wants to reciprocate, and they view their relationship with the helper as close. But when someone is perceived to be helping out of selfish motives, the recipient is much less likely to reciprocate.”

Being willing – or unwilling – to return a favor

Johnson and Lee were inspired to research the topic when observing an interesting phenomenon in the workplace: co-workers are not always willing to return a favor done for them.

“There’s a lot of evidence that people don’t always reciprocate help when it’s given to them, despite strong societal norms for people to do so,” Johnson explains. “We suspected that the emotions involved in the helping process might be one of the reasons why.”

Johnson’s research focused on four specific emotions people can convey when helping. On the positive or socially engaged side, helpers can convey gratitude (e.g., “I appreciate the opportunity to help you out with this”) or sympathy (e.g., “I’m sorry this is so difficult. Can I lend a hand?”). The negative, or socially disengaging emotions, were pride and contempt (e.g., “I guess I’ll help you with this—though I shouldn’t have to explain something so obvious that you should already know.”)

Emotional signals matter because they reveal intentions

“Gratitude and sympathy both socially engage their recipients by signaling the helper’s attention and interest in the recipients,” the authors write in the study. Of the four emotions, pride is the most complex, as it’s natural for someone helping to feel good about doing so. Johnson says it is all about how that pride is conveyed.

“We needed to clarify how we were talking about pride,” he says. “It’s a hubristic pride that is off-putting—as in, ‘I’ve always been good at this; it shouldn’t be hard for you.’ We tend to resent people who express pride in that way.”

Johnson explains that emotional signals matter because they reveal intentions. We instinctively look for cues about whether someone is genuinely interested in our welfare or serving their own purposes. When someone helps you while expressing contempt—“I guess I’ll help you with this—though I shouldn’t have to explain something so obvious that you should already know”—we interpret that help very differently than when offered with genuine sympathy.

Does sincerity strengthen relationships?

Johnson and Lee designed a sequence of studies to test their hypothesis that how people respond to help at work depends on the emotions the helper expresses, which shape whether the help is seen as genuine or self-serving.

Across multiple studies, participants recalled or observed helping interactions featuring different emotional expressions and then reported how they perceived the helper’s motives.

The study found that when helpers expressed socially engaging emotions like gratitude or sympathy, they were seen as more genuinely motivated and less self-interested. This perception of prosocial intent led to stronger relationships between the helper and recipient, supporting the idea that emotional expression plays a key role in shaping how help is received.

Research conducted in the Foster Lab

In their follow-up studies, the professors brought undergraduate business students into Foster’s laboratory environment to view videos in which study participants were led to believe they were receiving help from a peer. They were randomly assigned to view one of the four emotional expressions delivered by a student actor. The video offered guidance on a complex museum case study task. Afterward, participants completed surveys measuring their perceptions of the helper’s motives and related decision-making responses.

These studies confirmed that helpers expressing socially engaging emotions were viewed as more genuinely motivated and less self-serving. Notably, only the perception of prosocial motives—not instrumental ones—predicted more substantial relationship quality and a greater willingness to reciprocate.