Even kids wont help if others are around

London: Children as young as five are less likely to help a person in need when other children are present and available to help, new research shows. "The children in our study helped at very high levels only when responsibility was clearly attributed to them," explained psychological scientist and lead researcher Maria Plotner of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.The findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, suggest that children at this age take responsibility into account when deciding whether to help.

Just like adults, children show the "bystander effect" which is most likely driven by a diffusion of responsibility when multiple bystanders are available to help someone in need. Previous research has shown that children are generally very helpful, but few studies had specifically looked at whether the presence of others affects this helping behaviour. The results show that the "bystander" effect is evident in children as young as five.