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

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

College Students’ Perceptions of Barriers to Bystander Intervention

Sexual violence is a major problem on college campuses and is associated with a range of negative health consequences for victims. Teaching students to intervene as prosocial bystanders has become a common element of sexual assault prevention efforts; although these programs have demonstrated positive effects on participants’ beliefs and knowledge, their impact on actual behavior is weaker. Understanding the factors that inhibit intervening in risky situations may enhance the effectiveness of bystander programs by identifying material that addresses these barriers. A sample of 281 first-year college students indicated whether they had encountered 10 situations that may present elevated risk of sexual or physical assault since arriving on campus, and if so, whether they had done something to intervene. If they had not intervened, they were asked to identify the barriers that had inhibited them. Participants also completed measures of two factors proposed to predict bystander behavior, self-efficacy and emotion regulation. A majority of participants intervened in most of the situations, but only 27% of participants intervened in every situation they encountered. Men and women differed in the barriers they identified most frequently across situations, with men endorsing Perceived Responsibility more often than women, and women reporting Skill Deficits more often than men. Neither men nor women perceived Audience Inhibition to be a significant barrier; it was salient in only one of the 10 situations. Students higher in global bystander self-efficacy were more likely to intervene and less likely to report barriers related to skill deficits and perceived responsibility. These results suggest that existing bystander intervention programs efforts can be improved by fostering a greater sense of collective responsibility in students and teaching specific intervention behaviors

The logic of two-level games with endogenous lobbying : the case of international environmental agreements

International environmental agreements (IEAs) are increasingly important in a globalized economy. The aim of our paper is study the effect of political pressure groups-lobbies on the size and stability of IEAs. To this purpose we use the framework of two-level games to explain how national political situation influences the decisions of governments at the international negotiations arena. We present an endogenous lobbying model in which we assume that lobbies try to influence the policy choice of governments by offering political contribution in return for policy compromise. Indeed, we use the "interest based explanation" of international environmental policy to describe the incentives of countries to join an agreement. This approach classifies countries in four categories : pushers, bystanders, intermediate and draggers. We found that, when government gives the same weight to contribution and to social welfare, the contributions from the industrial lobby give incentives to government (Pushers, intermediate) to participate in the grand coalition making it stable. Our results suggest that in order to sustain the grand coalition, weak global environmental agreements -i.e. those involving small abatement targets- should be negotiated. The result is similar if governments are more interested by political contribution. However, if governments care less about political contribution than about social welfare, industrial contribution is not enough to limit the free riding incentives of each type of government. In this situation, pushers are the more expected to sustain a small stable coalition.Non-cooperative game, interest group, coalition theory, environmental policy.

Pigouvian tax aversion and inequity aversion in the lab

We use an experimental market with externalities to test whether inequality aversion could help explain the popularity of earmarking tax revenues. We find that voter opposition is not fully explained by material self-interest: Results indicate that preferences for fairness influence voting behavior, with greater inequality in tax revenue distribution negatively affecting the acceptability of the tax. In addition to this, we also discover a significant degree of tax-aversion in the votes. Our findings provide greater understanding of the behavioral underpinnings of the positive impact that earmarking has on the acceptability of Pigouvian taxes.Pigouvian taxes, public acceptability, earmarking, fairness, inequity aversion, laboratory experiments

Guilt in voting and public good games

This paper analyzes how moral costs affect individual support of morally difficult group decisions. We study a threshold public good game with moral costs. Motivated by recent empirical findings, we assume that these costs are heterogeneous and consist of three parts. The first one is a standard cost term. The second, shared guilt, decreases in the number of supporters. The third hinges on the notion of being pivotal. We analyze equilibrium predictions, isolate the causal effects of guilt sharing, and compare results to standard utilitarian and non- consequentialist approaches. As interventions, we study information release, feedback, and fostering individual moral standards

Never Again? The United Nations and Genocide: A Doomed Mission?

Despite their commitment to international peace and security and to the concept of “never again,” the United Nations has failed to end the many genocides of the late 20th century. In this thesis, I use the genocides in Rwanda (1994) and in the Yugoslav Wars (1991-1999) as case studies to understand the UN’s response to genocide and to attempt to understand why the UN cannot effectively respond to and end genocide. I discover that issues such as the limitations of the Genocide Convention, the importance of state sovereignty, and overall institutional failures of the United Nation make any attempt to end genocide doomed. I end the discussion by examining ways the UN has attempted to fix these inadequacies, but ultimately come to the conclusion that their attempts have been futile and have allowed for genocides to continue into the twenty-first century, using the case studies of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uyghurs in China. Throughout this paper, I use a number of sources to develop my answer. Primary sources include sources such as eye-witness interviews, UN released reports, independent fact finding research, UN documents such as the UN Charter and Genocide Convention, and documents from the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda (ICTR) and in Yugoslavia (ICTY). My secondary sources come from scholarly articles and books, newspaper articles, articles issued by think tanks, and museum resources

Machine Learning Methods for detection of bystanders: A Survey

The number of users on social media networks is increasing day by day as their popularity increases. The users are sharing their photos, videos, daily life, experiences, views, and status updates on different social networking sites. Social networking sites give great possibilities for young people to interact with others, but they also make them more subject to unpleasant phenomena such as online harassment and abusive language, which leads to cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a prevalent social problem that inflicts detrimental consequences to the health and safety of victims such as psychological distress, anti-social behavior, and suicide. To minimize the impact of Cyberbullying, the Bystander role is very important. In this paper, a review of the cyberbullying content on the Internet, the classification of cyberbullying categories, classifying author roles (harasser, victim, bystander-defender, bystander-assistant), data sources containing cyberbullying data for research, and machine learning techniques for cyberbullying detection are overviewed.&nbsp