When Bystanders Are Present: Children’s Helping Behavior Toward a Distressed Social Robot

Children around 5 years old exhibit a strong inclination to help others. However, they show less helping behavior when others are present, which is known as the bystander effect. As social robots enter children's lives, children's helping behavior may also be affected by social robots. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out whether children also exhibit bystander effects when confronted with a distressed robot, and its underlying factors contributing to this phenomenon. Sixty participants (Mage = 66.10 months, SD = 4.46) were randomly assigned to three conditions: alone condition, bystander condition and bystander-unavailable condition. Children's helping behavior was observed while interacting with the robot recipient, and then they participated in an animacy interview. The results revealed that children can attribute animacy to the robot, however, in bystander condition, their helping behavior was significantly less than in other conditions when confronted with a robot recipient, mainly due to the diffusion of responsibility.