Grouping of children's helping behaviour

215 school children aged 9 to 12 yr. were grouped according to their helping behaviour. The following variables were measured: helping, empathy, altruism, morality, attribution of responsibility, cognitive readiness to help, willingness to help, social desirability, and abstract thinking. In a factor analysis age and sex were included. Five factors were extracted and interpreted: empathetic helping, socially desirable helping, cognitive helping, intentionality, and rational helping. According to grouping analysis these five factors were weighted differently, and three groups were identified, (1) real helpers with high empathy, altruism, morality, and cognitive readiness to help, (2) normative helpers, motivated by social desirability or cognitive factors with poor empathy level, and (3) cognitively premature, rational helpers with poor empathy and with weak social desirability.