Competence-based helping: Children's consideration of need when providing others with help.

• Is 4- to 8-year-old children's helping influenced by other people's competence? • With age, children were more likely to provide more help to incompetent targets. • Four-year-old children did not help incompetent targets more. • Four-year-old children said incompetent targets needed more help. • Young children do not deliver more help to those who more help. When and how other people's needs influence children's helping is poorly understood. Here we focused on whether children use information about other people's competence in their helping. In Study 1 (N = 128 4- to 8-year-old children), children could provide help to both an incompetent target and a competent target by pushing levers. Whereas older children helped incompetent targets more than competent targets, younger children (<5 years) helped both targets equally. Two further experiments (N = 20 and N = 28) revealed that 4-year-olds understood that the incompetent person needed more help and also understood how they could help. Thus, young children do not, like older children, give more help to those who need it the most. We discuss potential developmental changes toward competence-based helping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]