Humans around the world like to help

Lead author, Professor Nick Enfield. A global study, led by co-director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research Professor Nick Enfield, shows human tendency to help others within their social group is universal. New research on the human capacity for cooperation finds that, deep down, people of diverse cultures are more similar than you might expect. Published in Nature Scientific Reports , the study finds that from the towns of England, Italy, Poland and Russia to the villages of rural Ecuador, Ghana, Laos, and the First Nations countries across Australia, at the micro scale of our daily interaction, people everywhere tend to help others in their close social circles when needed. "Our reliance on each other for help is constant," said Professor Nick Enfield , of University of Sydney, who led the study with Assistant Professor Giovanni Rossi of University of California, Los Angeles. The study found that in everyday life, someone will signal a need for assistance (for example, to pass a utensil) once every two minutes and 17 seconds on average. In all cultures, these small requests for assistance are complied with seven times more often than they are declined.