Role of donor competence, donor age, and peer presence on helping in an emergency.

Competence, reticence, and helping by children and adolescents.

“…Results of this study replicate prior findings of a curvilinear relationship between age and children's emergency intervention (Staub, 1970, 1971a). As predicted, in the absence of instructions focusing responsibility on the child, or specific training (Peterson, 1983a, b), first and seventh graders gave less help to another child than did fourth graders. Also as expected, reasons most frequently given by the sample of first graders asked to specify motives for not helping almost exclusively reflected either concerns about their presumed lack of competence or perceptions by the potential recipient that they were incompetent.…”

“…Although the additive effect of gender on helping was not significant (cf. Peterson, 1983b;Rushton, 1976), there was a significant interactive effect of gender and victim age on helping. In regard to both the amount helped and the latency of help, girls gave significantly more help than boys when the potential recipient was a toddler, but they were less altruistic when confronted by an injured peer.…”

“…The most common reasons expressed referred to the participant's concern that they might not be competent helpers (Grades 1 and 7), fear of disapproval (Grade 7), and concern that either they or the potential recipient would feel incompetent or embarrassed. Possibly because the injury occurred in full sight of the subject, none gave such reasons as “I was too busy,” or “I didn't know what was happening” (Peterson, 1983b).…”

“…Children express concern for others beginning at a very early age (Rheingold, Hay, & West, 1976; Strayer, Wareing, & Rushton, 1979; Waxler, Yarrow, & King, 1979). Furthermore, as the child grows older, there are likely to be concomitant increases in altruistic moral judgment (Eisenberg, 1982; Bar-Tal, Raviv, & Shavit, 1981), in the ability to empathize with others (Hoffman, 1975), in the value placed on altruistic behavior (Rushton, 1976), and in both perceived and actual competence (Midlarsky, 1984; Peterson, 1983a, b). All of these, in turn, are apparently related to altruism—defined here as self-sacrifice motivated by the desire to help another (Bryan & London, 1970; Midlarsky, 1984).…”

The Development of Prosocial Behaviors in Young Children: A Prospective Population-Based Cohort Study

“…As children get older they also gain a better awareness of their limited resources or competence to help. If they believe that other individuals present are more capable than they are of handling the distress situation (Peterson, 1983), or that the cost (direct or incidental) to them of helping or comforting is too high (Staub, 1970), they may not feel the moral Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 09:16 15 June 2015 obligation to come to the aid of a peer in distress. Another possible explanation is that, in daycares and other similar settings, designated individuals are usually in charge of helping children in distress (Caplan & Hay, 1989).…”