In two additional studies, we (Mikulincer et al., 2005, Studies 3-4) tested whether contextual activation of mental representations of attachment security override egoistic motives for helping, such as mood enhancement (Schaller & Cialdini, 1988) and empathic joy (Smith, Keating, & Stotland, 1989). Study participants were randomly assigned to one of two priming conditions (security priming, neutral priming); read a true newspaper article about a woman in dire personal and financial distress; and then rated their emotional reactions to the article in terms of compassion and personal distress. In one study, half of the participants anticipated mood enhancement by means other than helping (e.g., expecting, immediately after this part of the experiment, to watch a comedy film). In the other study, half of the participants were told that the needy woman was chronically depressed and that her mood might be beyond their ability to improve it (the "no empathic joy” condition). Schaller and Cialdini (1988) and Smith et al. (1989) have previously found that these two conditions reduce egoistic motivations for helping, because a person gains no special mood-related benefit from helping the needy person. In our studies, however, these conditions failed to inhibit security-induced altruistic motives for helping, which were expressed even when the manipulated egoistic motives were absent (Batson, 1991).