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conceptualising expectancy as a moderator in the help-seeking process is especially important with regard to arguments about how individuals’ beliefs about self-esteem protection and public image protection may inhibit them from seeking the needed help. Indeed, conceptualising expectancy as a moderator in the help-seeking process will help us understand some inconsistent findings among studies that have regarded expectancy as a main effect predictor of help-seeking (Wills & DePaulo, 1991). This may in turn guide future help-seeking research. Indeed, some prior researchers have also used the Theory of Planned Behavior or the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to examine help-seeking behavior (e.g. Mo & Mak, 2009; Shaffer et al., 2006; Vogel et al., 2005); however, these researchers have not drawn on Fishbein’s Expectancy-value Theory (which is incorporated within the TPB and TRA frameworks). Yet, as shown in this paper, EVT equips us with a better understanding of individuals’ help-seeking decision and behavior. Thus, this paper contributes to research by providing an in-depth explication on the use of the EVT framework in help-seeking research. Third, this paper contributes to the literature by positing a constellation approach to examine the various beliefs/concerns that are involved in people’s decision to seek help. This constellation approach may be useful as it shows the interplay among various beliefs that are associated with helpseeking, and also helps us understand some of the contradictory findings in the literature. For example, Nadler et al. (2003) found that people seek more help from superiors than co-workers, whereas Lee (1997) found that employees seek more help from co-workers than superiors. While Nadler et al. explained their findings in terms of the perceived utility of the help (i.e. ExpectancyTask Accomplishment), Lee explained her findings in terms of power motivation (i.e. ValueAvoid Dependence). Using a constellation approach enables us to be cognisant that the relative strength or importance of various factors may have resulted in the contradictory findings across studies. Thus, it will be useful to consider the constellation of salient beliefs when predicting people’s help-seeking intention and behavior. Lastly, this paper contributes to helpseeking research by proposing a multi-level help-seeking framework, which describes how individual-level and group-level factors influence people’s help-seeking intention and behavior. A boundary condition of this review paper is that my proposed helpseeking model focuses on the cognitive aspects of help-seeking only; the model does not address the emotion aspects of help-seeking. One reason for this is that there is precious little empirical research to date on how emotions influence people’s help-seeking behavior. This may be a fruitful avenue for future research as the need to seek help may also trigger people’s emotions, which may in turn have implications for their help-seeking behavior. © 2012 The Author. Applied Psychology: An International Review © 2012 International Association of Applied Psychology.