Tanmaya, a school-going girl, helped a blind person cross the road and felt happy to see the smile on the blind person’s face. This can be explained through:

Correct option is C

-The feeling of happiness that Tanmaya experiences after helping the blind person can be best explained by the Empathic-Joy hypothesis.
-This hypothesis suggests that individuals experience positive emotions when they help others, especially when they see the recipient’s positive reaction, as in the case of the smile from the blind person.
​
Information Booster:

-Empathic-Joy hypothesis posits that helping others leads to positive emotional experiences, especially when the person being helped shows appreciation or happiness.
-Tanmaya’s joy comes not from receiving something in return, but from witnessing the blind person’s happiness as a result of her action.
-This hypothesis emphasizes that helping behavior is often motivated by the emotional reward of seeing the other person’s well-being improve.
-It suggests that helping others is not always purely selfless but can provide a source of joy for the helper.
-This is a form of altruism where the helper gains emotional satisfaction from seeing the positive outcomes of their actions.

Additional Knowledge:

Option (a): Defensive helping phenomenon is when people help others to reduce the threat posed by that person (usually to people who are perceived as a threat in some way), which doesn’t explain this situation.
Option (b): The Negative-state relief model suggests that people help others to reduce their own negative emotions, but Tanmaya seems to derive happiness from seeing the positive outcome of the helping act, not from reducing her own negative emotions.
Option (d): Reciprocal-altruism theory suggests people help others with the expectation of receiving help in return, which is not relevant to this context where Tanmaya experiences joy from her altruistic act without any expectation of return.