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Giving help is a generous act, but it can cause psychological distress for the recipients by inducing feelings of dependency, incompetence, or indebtedness. The current research identifies a novel factor—the timing of help in the course of an activity—that modulates the negative effect of help on the recipient’s subjective well-being. Across nine studies, we show that people experience less happiness and satisfaction when they receive help in a later (vs. earlier) stage of an activity. We attribute this timing effect to the recipient’s loss of psychological ownership of the activity; help causes a temporary, perceived shift of ownership from the recipient to the helper, and the recipient perceives a greater loss of ownership after receiving help in a later (vs. earlier) stage. We also identify two theoretical moderators: The effect holds when the activity is pursued for intrinsic reasons (eg, for enjoyment) but not when the activity is …