Ticket Inspectors in Action:Body-Worn Camera Analysis of Aggressive and Nonaggressive Passenger Encounters

Objective: Workplace aggression is a harmful occupational hazard, which has been associated with individual- and organizational-level risk factors. By comparison, little is known about the face-to-face interactional dynamics that shape employee victimizations. To address this gap, we provide an interactional analysis of how ticket inspector actions are associated with the risk of passenger aggression. Method: Data were a video sample of 123 ticket fining events from public buses recorded by occupational body-worn cameras. We systematically coded the inspector and passenger actions in each fining event. The individual and interactional risk factors associated with passenger aggression were estimated with a logistic regression model. Results: Our empirical analysis suggests that aggressive fining events unfold as “character contests,” in which the actions of the inspectors are associated with the aggressive outcome. Conclusions: These findings are in line with situational approaches to violence highlighting that aggressive incidents often develop as an interplay between victim and offender actions. We propose focusing on the behavioral actions of employees for prevention measures of workplace aggression

Does Danger Level Affect Bystander Intervention in Real-Life Conflicts?:Evidence From CCTV Footage

In real-life violence, bystanders can take an active role in de-escalating conflict and helping others. Recent meta-analytical evidence of experimental studies suggests that elevated danger levels in conflicts facilitate bystander intervention. However, this finding may lack ecological validity because ethical concerns prohibit exposing participants to potentially harmful situations. Using an ecologically valid method, based on an analysis of 80 interpersonal conflicts unobtrusively recorded by public surveillance cameras, the present study confirms that danger is positively associated with bystander intervention. In the presence of danger, bystanders were 19 times more likely to intervene than in the absence of danger. It extends this knowledge by discovering that incremental changes in the severity level of the danger (low, medium, and high), however, were not associated with bystander intervention. These findings confirm the importance of further investigating the role of danger for bystander intervention, in larger samples, and involving multiple types of real-life emergencies

No evidence that mask-wearing in public places elicits risk compensation behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Face masks have been widely employed as a personal protective measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, concerns remain that masks create a false sense of security that reduces adherence to other public health measures, including social distancing. This paper tested whether mask-wearing was negatively associated with social distancing compliance. In two studies, we combined video-observational records of public mask-wearing in two Dutch cities with a natural-experimental approach to evaluate the effect of an area-based mask mandate. We found no observational evidence of an association between mask-wearing and social distancing but found a positive link between crowding and social distancing violations. Our natural-experimental analysis showed that an area-based mask mandate did not significantly affect social distancing or crowding levels. Our results alleviate the concern that mask use reduces social distancing compliance or increases crowding levels. On the other hand, crowding reduction may be a viable strategy to mitigate social distancing violations