Why are older children less likely to help their bullied peers?

In a new study on bullying at school, researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London have found that as children get older, they are less likely to help their peers during incidences of name-calling.

The study of 260 young people showed that younger children (aged 8-10) were more likely than adolescents (aged 13-15) to say that they would help a bullied peer.

Younger pupils were more likely to reason that bullying is “not a nice way to treat other people”, reason that everyone is equally important, and more often express empathy for the victim.

Older pupils were more likely to reason that the bullying incident was “none of my business” or think that helping would mean they would end up getting bullied as well. Teenagers also thought that others their age would not help, and this partially explained why they would be less likely to help.

These findings show that adolescents are faced with multiple concerns when choosing to help, including how their group might react to their behaviour.

Led by Dr Sally Palmer from the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, with Professor Adam Rutland (Goldsmiths) and Dr Lindsey Cameron (University of Kent), the research team found that meaningful group affiliations increased the likelihood of helpful behaviour among older children who witnessed verbal bullying.

When adolescents shared the same group membership as the victim, and identified strongly with that group membership, they were much more likely to want to help the victim.

Implications for anti-bulling programmes 

Dr Palmer explains why the study’s findings are important for anti-bulling programmes:

“We decided to look at verbal aggression, as a prevalent form of bullying experienced by both age groups, which can be difficult to detect, but can have damaging long-term psychological outcomes.

“Our findings are particularly important for understanding children's helpful bystander responses to group-based bullying - such as bullying due to ethnicity, religion or gender - as they show that children are influenced by social categories when reporting whether they would help or not.

“This research has important implications for school and charity anti-bullying programmes. Age differences in our findings suggest that older children may require a particular focus on 'collective helping', supported by the wider peer group.

“In addition, emphasising the severity of group-based bullying, and focusing on moral obligation to treat everyone fairly could help promote helpful bystander responses.”

The development of bystander intentions and social-moral reasoning about intergroup verbal aggression was published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology.