Abstract

To address the incongruity observed in prior research regarding the impact of helping behavior on recipients, we have integrated helping as status relations framework and the social function view of emotion to develop a theoretical framework that examines the differentiated responses on dependency-oriented help from the perspectives of recipients. Employing a round-robin research design from giver-recipient dyadic interaction perspective, we utilized five-wave data from 826 dyads consisting of 337 employees within 101 teams. Our results supported that dependency-oriented help was positively and indirectly related to workplace envy via status threat, and envy in turn produces two recipients' differentiated reactions. The present research elucidates the role of gratitude as a moderator in the relationship between workplace envy and self-improvement, as well as social undermining. Additionally, it sheds light on the incongruity observed in prior research findings, enhances understanding of the impact of dependency-oriented help on recipients' emotions, elucidates the mechanism un-derlying the diverse behavioral responses of recipients on dependency-oriented help, and of-fers theoretical guidance for the effective implementation of teammate-to-teammate help in-terventions.