What Difference do Bystanders Make? The Association of Bystander Involvement with Victim Outcomes in a Community Sample

Objective: To fill gaps in the bystander literature by describing patterns of bystander involvement and associations between bystander involvement and victim outcomes across different types of emotional, physical, and sexual victimizations and to expand these considerations to a rural rather than urban sample. Method: Adults and adolescents (n = 1,703) were surveyed about bystander actions, bystander safety, and victim outcomes (injury, disrupted routine, fear level, and current mental health) for 10 forms of victimization. Results: Bystanders were present for roughly 2 thirds of most victimization types (59% to 67%), except sexual victimization (17%). Relatives were the most common bystanders of family violence and friends or acquaintances were the most common bystanders of peer violence. For all 10 victimizations, more bystanders helped than harmed the situation, but most commonly had no impact. Rates of bystander harm for sexual victimizations were higher than for other types. Especially for peer-perpetrated incidents, victim outcomes were often better when bystanders helped. Bystander safety (unharmed and unthreatened) was consistently associated with better victim outcomes. Conclusion: Bystanders witness the majority of physical and psychological victimizations. These data lend support to the premise of many prevention programs that helpful bystanders are associated with more positive victim outcomes. Bystander prevention should focus on the type of bystanders most commonly present and should teach bystanders ways to stay safe while helping victims

Dynamics of Helping Behavior and Networks in a Small World

To investigate an effect of social interaction on the bystanders' intervention in emergency situations a rescue model was introduced which includes the effects of the victim's acquaintance with bystanders and those among bystanders from a network perspective. This model reproduces the experimental result that the helping rate (success rate in our model) tends to decrease although the number of bystanders $k$ increases. And the interaction among homogeneous bystanders results in the emergence of hubs in a helping network. For more realistic consideration it is assumed that the agents are located on a one-dimensional lattice (ring), then the randomness $p \in [0,1]$ is introduced: the $kp$ random bystanders are randomly chosen from a whole population and the $k-kp$ near bystanders are chosen in the nearest order to the victim. We find that there appears another peak of the network density in the vicinity of $k=9$ and $p=0.3$ due to the cooperative and competitive interaction between the near and random bystanders.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Rescue Model for the Bystanders' Intervention in Emergencies

To investigate an effect of social interaction on the bystanders' intervention in emergency situations we introduce a rescue model which includes the effects of the victim's acquaintance with bystanders and those among bystanders. This model reproduces the surprising experimental result that the helping rate tends to decrease although the number of bystanders $k$ increases. The model also shows that given the coupling effect among bystanders, for a certain range of small $k$ the helping rate increases according to $k$ and that coupling effect plays both positive and negative roles in emergencies. Finally we find a broad range of coupling strength to maximize the helping rate.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Coherent use of information by hens observing their former dominant defeating or being defeated by a stranger.

This study examines the role of observation during the formation of triads in female domestic hens. Results indicate that during hierarchy formation, a hen observing agonistic interactions and conflict settlement between its former dominant and a stranger uses this information when in turn confronted by the latter. Under a first condition (E, N=15 triads), bystanders witnessed their prior dominant being defeated by a stranger before being introduced to them. In a second condition (C1, N=16 triads), bystanders witnessed the victory of their prior dominant over a stranger. In a third condition (C2, N=15 triads), bystanders witnessed two strangers establishing a dominance relationship before being introduced to their prior dominant and to a stranger the former had just defeated. The behavioural strategies of bystanders depended on the issue of the conflict they had witnessed. Bystanders of the E condition behaved as having no chance of defeating the stranger. They never initiated an attack against it, and upon being attacked, readily submitted in turn to the stranger. On the contrary, bystanders of the C1 condition behaved as having some chances against the stranger. They initiated attacks in 50% of cases, and won 50% of conflicts against the stranger. Under condition C2, bystanders first initiated contact with the strangers in only 27% of cases, which approximates the average of their chances for defeating the stranger. However, bystanders finally defeated the strangers in 40% of cases. These results suggest that bystanders of conditions E and C1 gained some information on the relationship existing between their prior dominant and the stranger and that they used it coherently, perhaps through transitive inference, thus contributing to the existence of transitive relationships within the triads. Alternate explanations are examined

Material Contribution, Responsibility, and Liability

In her inventive and tightly argued book Defensive Killing, Helen Frowe defends the view that bystanders—those who do not pose threats to others—cannot be liable to being harmed in self-defence or in defence of others. On her account, harming bystanders always infringes their rights against being harmed, since they have not acted in any way to forfeit them. According to Frowe, harming bystanders can be justified only when it constitutes a lesser evil. In this brief essay, I make the case that some bystanders can indeed be liable to harm. They can be liable, I will argue, because they can be morally responsible for threats of harm, and in becoming responsible they can forfeit their rights. While bystanders cannot be responsible for initiating threats, they can become responsible for the persistence of threats, and for culpably failing to prevent them from being initiated in the first place

TransparentHMD: Revealing the HMD User's Face to Bystanders

While the eyes are very important in human communication, once a user puts on a head mounted display (HMD), the face is obscured from the outside world's perspective. This leads to communication problems when bystanders approach or collaborate with an HMD user. We introduce transparentHMD, which employs a head-coupled perspective technique to produce an illusion of a transparent HMD to bystanders. We created a self contained system, based on a mobile device mounted on the HMD with the screen facing bystanders. By tracking the relative position of the bystander using the smartphone's camera, we render an adapting perspective view in realtime that creates the illusion of a transparent HMD. By revealing the user's face to bystanders, our easy to implement system allows for opportunities to investigate a plethora of research questions particularly related to collaborative VR systems

Bombers and bystanders in suicide attacks in Israel, 2000 to 2003

The paper analyses the results of interaction between suicide operatives and bystanders in the course of 103 suicide attacks in Israel over a recent threeyear period. It shows that bystanders’ intervention tended to reduce the casualties arising by numbers that were both statistically and practically significant. When bystanders intervened, however, this was often at the cost of their own lives. The value of a challenge was particularly large for suicide missions associated with Hamas, but Hamas operations were also less likely to meet a challenge in the first place. These findings, while preliminary, may have implications for counter-terrorism. More systematic collection of statistical data relating to suicide incidents would be of benefit

Young children show the bystander effect in helping situations

The authors thank the ESRC for supporting Harriet Over (grant number ES/K006702/1).Much research in social psychology has shown that otherwise helpful people often fail to help when bystanders are present. Research in developmental psychology has shown that even very young children help, and that others’ presence can actually increase helping in some cases. In the current study, in contrast, 5-year-old children helped an experimenter at very high levels when they were alone, but significantly less in the presence of bystanders who were potentially available to help. In another condition designed to elucidate the mechanism underlying the effect, children’s helping was not reduced when bystanders were present but confined behind a barrier and thus unable to help (a condition that has not been run in previous studies with adults). Young children thus show the bystander effect, and it is not due to social referencing or shyness to act in front of others, but rather to a sense of a diffusion of responsibility.PostprintPeer reviewe

Bystanders, parcelling, and an absence of trust in the grooming interactions of wild male chimpanzees

The evolution of cooperation remains a central issue in socio-biology with the fundamental problem of how individuals minimize the risks of being short-changed (‘cheated’) should their behavioural investment in another not be returned. Economic decisions that individuals make during interactions may depend upon the presence of potential partners nearby, which o ers co operators a temptation to defect from the current partner. The parcelling model posits that donors subdivide services into parcels to force cooperation, and that this is contingent on opportunities for defection; that is, the presence of bystanders. Here we test this model and the e ect of bystander presence using grooming interactions of wild chimpanzees. We found that with more bystanders, initiators gave less grooming at the beginning of the bout and were more likely to abandon a grooming bout, while bouts were less likely to be reciprocated. We also found that the groomer’s initial investment was not higher among frequent groomers or stronger reciprocators, suggesting that contrary to current assumptions, grooming decisions are not based on trust, or bonds, within dyads. Our work highlights the importance of considering immediate social context and the in uence of bystanders for understanding the evolution of the behavioural strategies that produce cooperation

Understanding the role of bystanders and peer support in school bullying

Research into school bullying has traditionally focussed on the actual protagonists – the perpetrators and the targets. Consequently, we know a great deal about the psychological characteristics of bullies and victims and the consequences of bullying in undermining the emotional well-being of both targets and perpetrators. While an understanding of the personal aspects of the bully-victim relationship is important, it only addresses part of the issue. Bullying is experienced within a group of peers who adopt different participant roles and who experience a range of emotions. In this article, I argue that bullies do not act alone but rely on reinforcement from their immediate group of friends as well as the tacit approval of the onlookers. This article explores the conflicting emotions often experienced by the bystanders. It also makes some suggestions about interventions to empower bystanders to take action against bullying through, for example, such interventions as peer support.peer-reviewe