From Empathy to Apathy: The Bystander Effect Revisited

Individual, Interpersonal, and Contextual: Barriers and Facilitators to Bystander Intervention for Problematic Alcohol Use

Background: Bystander intervention (BI) is a promising technique to reduce problematic alcohol use (PAU) and its consequences among college students. However, to effectively apply BI principles to PAU, it is essential to understand barriers and facilitators that influence whether an individual decides to intervene in PAU situations. Objectives: The purpose of this research is to identify barriers and facilitators to BI for PAU among college students. Methods: We conducted 20 focus groups and 9 interviews with 79 diverse undergraduate college students. Transcripts were coded thematically using inductive and deductive methods. Results: Findings show that barriers and facilitators to BI for PAU can be categorized into three levels: 1) individual, 2) interpersonal, and 3) contextual. Themes within the individual level include knowledge and beliefs, personal history, and bystander intoxication. Themes within the interpersonal level include relational distance, shared identity, and relationship concerns. Themes within the contextual level include access to resources, the drinking environment, and policy concerns. Conclusions: Barriers and facilitators must be considered when designing BI programs for PAU. Future research should examine effective strategies to minimize barriers and maximize facilitators, thus increasing BI and potentially reducing the number of college students who are negatively impacted by PAU.

Taste priming shapes online moral judgment: implications for cyberspace governance

This study explores the link between taste perception and moral judgment, focusing on how tastelessness and varying taste intensities influence the assessment of online events. Participants were exposed to taste priming, ranging from tastelessness to mild and intense sweetness, as well as mild and intense bitterness, to evaluate their moral judgments on events with varying degrees of morality. The findings revealed no significant difference between the tasteless and sweet priming groups. However, the bitterness group exhibited complex effects: moderate bitterness led to the harshest judgments of obvious immoral events, while intense bitterness resulted in stricter judgments for moral events and more lenient judgments for immoral ones. These results suggest that tastelessness may mimic the effects of sweetness, and the influence of bitterness varies with its intensity. The study offers a new perspective on cyberspace governance, suggesting that regulating taste-related stimuli could influence online moral judgment and decision-making processes.

Get Over It: Surgical Residents' Responses to Simulated Harassment. A Multi Method Study

OBJECTIVE

This study examined the response strategies of Surgery residents as bystanders to harassment in a simulated clinical environment, their alignment with the bystander intervention model, and the motivations behind their actions.

DESIGN

Participants watched an educational video on harassment and ways to address it prior to undergoing a simulated clinical scenario where they witnessed a senior resident harassing a medical student. The study used audio-video recordings of the simulations to capture and analyze residents' verbal and nonverbal responses to harassment. Frequencies from deductive thematic analysis were used for descriptive analysis, and nonparametric chi-square tests. Audio recordings of debriefings following simulations were also analyzed using deductive thematic analysis to explore residents' motivations behind their responses.

SETTING

The study was conducted in a controlled environment at McGill University's Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning (Montreal, Canada).

PARTICIPANTS

Participants included 32 Surgery residents completing the simulation as part of their Objective Structured Clinical Examinations. 28 residents provided usable data for analysis.

RESULTS

Residents used passive responses significantly more frequently than other responses throughout the simulation, especially in reaction to harassment. Analysis revealed that residents often delayed intervention, opting to remain passive or reassuring the victim rather than confronting the harasser. Debriefing showed that some residents intervened to denounce the SR's behavior or support the MS, while others hesitated due to discomfort with power dynamics, fear of repercussions, or uncertainty about addressing the situation CONCLUSIONS: The study found that Surgery residents exhibit a tendency towards passive bystander responses in the face of harassment highlighting the need for targeted educational strategies to address power dynamics, build confidence in bystander intervention, and promote proactive responses to harassment in clinical training. Future research should explore similar dynamics across different medical professionals and consider intersectional factors to enhance antiharassment initiatives in medical education.

Lived experience of Filipino nurses as uninvolved bystanders in Out-of-Hospital emergencies

BACKGROUND

Occurrences of out-of-hospital emergencies (OHE) underscored the vital roles of bystanders yet nurses on some occasions may take on this role uninvolved.

METHODOLOGY

This study employed a qualitative research design specifically a Husserlian Descriptive Phenomenology to explore the lived experience of nurses who became uninvolved bystanders in OHE.

RESULTS

Semi structured in-depth interviews with nine nurses revealed four central themes: (1) recognizing an ambiguous situation, (2) acknowledging the required competence and confidence, (3) dealing with negative emotions, and (4) caring for oneself and the victim.

CONCLUSION

Nurses, as uninvolved bystanders, were confronted with an ambiguous situation which underscored their psychosocial needs. Even if societal expectations dictate nurses to take on an active role, at times being uninvolved in OHE reflects a 'caring individual' who balances professional knowledge, skills, and attitude resulting in the protection of patients and upholding personal welfare.

RECOMMENDATIONS

There is a need to sufficiently and legally safeguard the welfare of respondents in OHE, and provide additional education and training to effectively manage OHE. Further research is recommended for policy development.

The convergence between defence and care in mammals

The motivations to protect oneself and others have often been seen as conflicting. Here, we discuss recent evidence that self-defensive mechanisms may in fact be recruited to enable the helping of others. In some instances, the defensive response to a threat may even be more decisive in promoting helping than the response to a conspecific's distress (as predicted by empathy-altruism models). In light of this evidence, we propose that neural mechanisms implicated in self-defence may have been repurposed through evolution to enable the protection of others, and that defence and care may be convergent rather than conflicting functions. Finally, we present and discuss a working model of the shared brain mechanisms implicated in defence of both self and others.

The connections between personality, ideology and (counter-)empathic emotions depend on the target

OBJECTIVES

Examine the group-specific connections between personality, ideology, and the moral emotions of empathy and schadenfreude.

BACKGROUND

Empathy and schadenfreude are emotions that often lead to moral prosocial or spiteful harmful behaviors respectively. An outstanding question is what motivates feelings of empathy and schadenfreude towards people from different groups. Here we examine two prominent motivators of emotions: personality traits and ideology. Previous work has found that people's ideological orientations towards respecting traditionalism (RWA) and preferences about group-based hierarchy (SDO) can impact intergroup emotions. Further, personality traits of low agreeableness, low openness, and high conscientiousness uniquely engender SDO and RWA.

METHOD

In the research presented here (Study 1 n = 492; Study 2 n = 786), we examine the relationships between personality traits, ideology, and emotions for groups that are perceived to be dangerous and competitive. We hypothesize that SDO and RWA will relate to reduced empathy and increased schadenfreude but towards unique groups. SDO will relate to reduced empathy and increased schadenfreude towards competitive, low-status groups while RWA will relate to reduced empathy and increased schadenfreude towards threatening groups. We further extend past work by investigating left-wing authoritarianism as well.

RESULTS

We find broad support for our expectation that the relationships between personality and emotions, as well as ideology and emotions, depend on the specific group in question.

CONCLUSIONS

These results help expand the dual process motivational model of prejudice and suggest the importance of specifying a target group when assessing relationships between personality, ideology, and emotions.

Fears and Concerns of Bystanders to Help People Injured in Traffic Accidents: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

In most traffic accidents, bystanders arrive at the scene before the rescuers. If they provide the right help, they can play an important and effective role in reducing the number of deaths and complications caused by these accidents. However, in many cases, fears and concerns prevent bystanders from providing assistance. This study aims to investigate and understand the fears and concerns of bystanders when they decide to help in traffic accidents. In 2022, this study was carried out in Iran using a qualitative content analysis approach. The data was collected through semistructured interviews. Participants were 15 males and females who had experience providing assistance in traffic accidents. Interviews, after digital recording, were transcribed verbatim. A purposeful and theoretical sampling method was performed. Data analysis and the determination of codes, categories, and subcategories were done using qualitative analysis software. O'Brien's qualitative research reporting standard was used. The results of the study include a category of fears and concerns and five subcategories. The subcategories include fear and concern caused by lack of information, fear of legal troubles, stress caused by previous experience, fear and anxiety caused by anticipation, and anxiety of unknown origin. The results of this study showed that some of the fears and concerns of the bystanders were related to a lack of information about providing assistance. By increasing bystanders' information about assistance, such as first aid training, fear and anxiety caused by a lack of information can be reduced. Another part of the fear and concern of bystanders is due to legal issues. Passing and implementing laws that protect bystanders can help reduce this fear and concern. Bystanders should be trained to provide assistance according to the rules of assistance so that they do not get into legal problems. A part of the bystander's fear and concern stems from their previous experiences providing assistance in traffic accidents. These experiences can also affect the fear and anxiety caused by anticipation. It is necessary to conduct more studies on the role of bystanders' experiences in creating fear and anxiety in them, as well as their effect on anticipatory fear.

Investigating the effects of autonomy-supportive parenting practices on Italian young adolescent students' motivation to defend victims of bullying: findings on the mediating roles of reactance, depression, anxiety, and stress

This study investigated the effect of autonomy-supportive parenting practices on young adolescents' self-reported motivation to defend victims of bullying, and the possible mediating effects of factors such as reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress.

Methods

Data were collected from 578 Italian public school students ages 10-14 (M age = 11.8 years, 52% boys), who completed a survey in their classroom. The survey included self-report measures of parental orientation, motivation to defend victims of bullying, reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress.

Results

We found that autonomy-supportive parenting had a positive effect on autonomous motivation to defend, and that this effect was weakly mediated by reactance. Moreover, autonomy-supportive parenting had a negative effect on extrinsic motivation to defend, which was partially mediated by reactance. Reactance had a positive direct effect on extrinsic motivation to defend, but results also showed that anxiety, depression, and stress did not mediate the effect of autonomy-supportive parenting on motivation to defend. Additionally, autonomy-supportive parenting appeared to play a protective role, being associated with lower levels of reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress. Finally, gender differences were found in our sample, with extrinsic motivation to defend being more prevalent in boys, and autonomous motivation to defend being more prevalent in girls. Girls also reported higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, compared to boys.

Conclusion

Our findings show that autonomy-supportive parenting practices play a significant role in fostering young adolescents' motivation to defend victims of bullying, and that they are also linked with lower feelings of reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress. We argue that interventions aimed at contrasting bullying and cyberbullying among youths should seek to involve parents more and promote the adoption of more autonomy-supportive parenting practices, due to their consistently proven beneficial effects.

Active Bystander Training: Using Standardized Patient Methodology to Teach Residents to Navigate Microaggressions in Patient Encounters

Introduction

Studies show that physicians and medical trainees who identify as underrepresented in medicine or as women experience higher rates of microaggressions during patient encounters. We designed, implemented, and evaluated an active bystander training workshop focused on mitigating microaggressions using standardized patient (SP) methodology.

Methods

Internal medicine faculty members and chief residents led the workshop. Participants included 31 PGY 1 categorical and preliminary internal medicine residents. They participated in three case simulations with SPs involving microaggressions from patients toward a member of the health care team. Prior to the case simulations, a brief presentation outlined examples of microaggressions and reviewed the behavioral response framework WAKE (work with who you are, ask questions/make direct statements, involve key people, and employ distraction techniques). After each encounter, residents debriefed with an internal medicine faculty member and discussed questions related to each scenario.

Results

All 31 residents participated in the workshop and, before and after the activity, completed a survey that asked them to rank their agreement with statements via a Likert scale. Participants reported statistically significant improvement in recognizing microaggressions (12% reported increase, p = .002), the ability to respond to patients who exhibit microaggressions (23% reported increase, p < .001), and the ability to debrief with team members (20% reported increase, p < .001).

Discussion

SP simulations can be an effective teaching modality for microaggression response strategies during patient encounters. Additional studies are needed to further characterize the workshop's effect on other medical workforce trainees and retention of skills over time.

The role of moral norms as a determinant of intentions to engage in bystander intervention to prevent sexual assault

Bystander interventions (BIs) primarily focus on increasing a sense of community and responsibility among students. This study examined moral norms as a determinant of intentions towards BI, within the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). College students at two universities (n = 291) completed an online survey measuring TPB constructs (e.g., intentions, perceived norms) and moral norms. Results indicated that moral norms were significantly associated with intentions toward BI, and appeared to be a valuable addition to the overall perceived norms construct. In addition, the law, parents, peers, and religion were identified as significant determinants of moral norms. Promoting collective responsibility to engage in BI and including a moral imperative to act in message development could increase the impact of BI.

Creating Clarity and Crew Courage: Preventive and Promotive Measures for a Maritime Industry Without Bullying and Harassment

Seafaring shares many characteristics with contemporary working life ashore. However, a major difference is that seafarers can spend up to 12 months aboard a ship that constitutes a work, living and recreational environment. Onboard work includes many stressors that can potentially contribute to workplace bullying and harassment, which in turn can affect safety critical operations. The aim of this study was to identify underlying causes in the organizational and social work environment that can cause workplace bullying and harassment at sea, and to suggest appropriate preventive and promotive strategies and measures. Data were collected mainly through World Café workshops with 56 participants from the Swedish maritime industry. Seafarer occupational health, safety, and wellbeing is largely determined by interdependent factors at micro, meso, and macro levels, where different stakeholders play various roles. Strategies and measures starting at the individual seafarer, and gradually expanding outwards toward the maritime industry are suggested. It is important that a victim of bullying or harassment receives adequate support. Creating crew courage enables employees to both recognize troubling situations and know how to act and respond to a situation. To bridge the gap between policy and practice, the legislative framework needs translating into practical procedures to make sense to the middle manager at the sharp end, with limited knowledge, time, resources, and decision latitude. Future research should evaluate the effectiveness of work environment interventions - what works, for whom, and under which circumstances.

Professional and Organizational Leadership Role in Ethics Management: Avoiding Reliance on Ethical Codification and Nurturing Ethical Culture

The engineering profession has experienced some ethical cases that were rarely reported, scrutinized, or discussed because: they did not necessarily represent violations of existing codes even if they breached ethical principles; those within the organization were not prepared to take steps to address the issues or impose sanction; an/or some of the personnel associated with these cases resorted to silence to avoid being labeled as trouble-makers in their organizations and, perhaps, more broadly, in society. The goal of this paper is to heighten managerial awareness of ethical issues, interrelated ethical lapses, and appropriate responsive actions within professional engineering communities. As such, the authors reviewed recent well-known professional and organizational ethical cases including impact of leadership role and existing standards, and critically analyzed interrelated literature. The paper's case studies exemplify that because ethical issues are complex, intricate, and nuanced; bylaws are insufficient for establishing the inclusive culture for handling potential ethical situations. In fact, through what is known as the codification of ethics, it is possible that someone's conduct can totally fulfill all professional responsibilities but still be unethical. As such, ethical leadership is needed to provide the means for establishing appropriate norms so as to set the proper structures for addressing the diverse ethical matters. Perceptions about the responses of leaders to potential ethical lapses are a critical factor in formulating, changing, and maintaining ethical values at the individual and organizational levels. A leader's passive attitude toward ethical issues can be the signal for the ignored lapses to become the norm at not only the organizational level but also the society. Guided by the new Code of Ethics by the American Society of Civil Engineers, this paper aims to trigger the proper ethical behavior and expectations for the welfare of the engineering profession both in the present and future.

Understanding the Importance of the Lay Responder Experience in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: A Scientific Statement From the American Heart Association

Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is critical to increasing survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. However, the percentage of cases in which an individual receives bystander CPR is actually low, at only 35% to 40% globally. Preparing lay responders to recognize the signs of sudden cardiac arrest, call 9-1-1, and perform CPR in public and private locations is crucial to increasing survival from this public health problem. The objective of this scientific statement is to summarize the most recent published evidence about the lay responder experience of training, responding, and dealing with the residual impact of witnessing an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. The scientific statement focuses on the experience-based literature of actual responders, which includes barriers to responding, experiences of doing CPR, use of an automated external defibrillator, the impact of dispatcher-assisted CPR, and the potential for postevent psychological sequelae. The large body of qualitative and observational studies identifies several gaps in crucial knowledge that, if targeted, could increase the likelihood that those who are trained in CPR will act. We suggest using the experience of actual responders to inform more contextualized training, including the implications of performing CPR on a family member, dispelling myths about harm, training and litigation, and recognition of the potential for psychologic sequelae after the event.

The Chivalrous Bystander: The Role of Gender-Based Beliefs and Empathy on Bystander Behavior and Perceived Barriers to Intervention

Despite substantial evidence demonstrating a relation between gender-based beliefs and violence against women, there has been little research examining whether sexist attitudes are related to prosocial bystander behavior. Understanding psychosocial influences on bystanders' behavior could inform bystander training programs on college campuses, and so the current study examined the unique and joint effects of three gender-based attitudes (rape myth acceptance, hostile sexism, and benevolent sexism) and empathy in predicting bystander behavior and perceived barriers to intervention in situations that undergraduates (N = 500; 70% female; M_age = 18.86 years) had experienced in the prior year. Benevolent sexism was the only gender-based attitude consistently associated with bystander behavior and perceived barriers. After accounting for participant empathy, benevolent sexism uniquely predicted less intervention in post-assault situations, greater perceived barriers in pre- and post-assault situations, and greater Failure to Perceive Responsibility and Skill Deficit barriers across situations. Associations between gender-based attitudes and bystander behavior also differed for men and women, with rape myth acceptance predicting greater Failure to Perceive Responsibility barriers and benevolent sexism predicting greater Skill Deficit barriers for women but not men. These results suggest that existing bystander education programs can be improved by explicitly addressing benevolent sexist beliefs and promoting empathy for victims of assault.

Be Responsible?

The bystander effect reveals that people are less likely to help a person in need when others are present. We examined the impact of priming the concept of responsibility on the bystander effect in a field study. Lone pedestrians (N = 259) were randomly assigned to a two (Bystanders: none and three nonresponsive bystanders) by two (Shirt: blank shirt and shirt with "Be Responsible" written on the front) design. A researcher dropped eight pens approximately 15 ft from a lone pedestrian, while wearing one of the two shirts in the presence/absence of bystanders (confederates). The bystander effect was found: Pedestrians helped pick up pens more frequently in the no bystanders condition (59.05% helped) compared to the nonresponsive bystanders condition (41.67% helped). The responsibility prime tended to boost helping rates, but it did not significantly increase helping rates either as a main effect or as part of an interaction term. The bystander effect was replicated in a field setting, but priming the concept of responsibility did not appear to reduce it.

Direct Bullying and Cyberbullying: Experimental Study of Bystanders' Motivation to Defend Victims and the Role of Anxiety and Identification With the Bully

School bullying among young adolescents is a globally pervasive problem, but is less common when bystanders are motivated to defend victims. Thus, the focus of this experimental study is on motivation to defend victims of bullying. Methods: A total of 388 students (M age = 12.22 years, 49.7% girls) from two Turkish public schools (5th-8th grade) participated in a vignette experiment. Students were randomized to one of two vignettes (direct vs. cyberbullying). Self-report measures of motivation to defend, trait anxiety, depression, and identification with the victim or bully were used. Results: Participants reported more autonomous motivation in the cyberbullying condition, while those who witnessed direct bullying reported higher anxiety and depression. Results also revealed that this type of condition was associated with anxiety and depression, while anxiety was associated with autonomous motivation to defend. Finally, participants in the direct bullying condition were more likely to identify with the bully. Conclusion: Findings advance our understanding of when and why adolescents are motivated to help victims of bullying because they give a richer picture of what they assess when deciding whether or not they should intervene.

Anybody watching? How others affect helpful actions

A new study by Havlik et al. (Science Advances, 6(28), eabb4205, 2020) reveals that rats are less likely to help a conspecific in need in the presence of passive bystanders, but that they are more likely to help when there are active bystanders that engage in helping. This study highlights the social skills of rats and the role of bystanders on cooperation, raising a range of interesting questions that should be explored both theoretically and empirically.

Help or flight? Increased threat imminence promotes defensive helping in humans

In humans and other mammals, defensive responses to danger vary with threat imminence, but it is unknown how those responses affect decisions to help conspecifics. Here, we manipulated threat imminence to investigate the impact of different defensive states on human helping behaviour. Ninety-eight healthy adult participants made trial-by-trial decisions about whether to help a co-participant avoid an aversive shock, at the risk of receiving a shock themselves. Helping decisions were prompted under imminent or distal threat, based on temporal distance to the moment of shock administration to the co-participant. Results showed that, regardless of how likely participants were to also receive a shock, they helped the co-participant more under imminent than distal threat. Reaction times and cardiac changes during the task supported the efficacy of the threat imminence manipulation in eliciting dissociable defensive states, with faster responses and increased heart rate during imminent compared to distal threats. Individual differences in empathic concern were specifically correlated with helping during imminent threats. These results suggest that defensive states driving active escape from immediate danger may also facilitate decisions to help others, potentially by engaging neurocognitive systems implicated in caregiving across mammals.

Temporal dynamics of resting EEG networks are associated with prosociality

As prosociality is key to facing many of our societies' global challenges (such as fighting a global pandemic), we need to better understand why some individuals are more prosocial than others. The present study takes a neural trait approach, examining whether the temporal dynamics of resting EEG networks are associated with inter-individual differences in prosociality. In two experimental sessions, we collected 55 healthy males' resting EEG, their self-reported prosocial concern and values, and their incentivized prosocial behavior across different reward domains (money, time) and social contexts (collective, individual). By means of EEG microstate analysis we identified the temporal coverage of four canonical resting networks (microstates A, B, C, and D) and their mutual communication in order to examine their association with an aggregated index of prosociality. Participants with a higher coverage of microstate A and more transitions from microstate C to A were more prosocial. Our study demonstrates that temporal dynamics of intrinsic brain networks can be linked to complex social behavior. On the basis of previous findings on links of microstate A with sensory processing, our findings suggest that participants with a tendency to engage in bottom-up processing during rest behave more prosocially than others.

Trait anxiety and bystander motivation to defend victims of school bullying

INTRODUCTION

School-based bullying is an omnipresent problem, but is less frequent when bystanders are inclined to defend victims. This makes it important to focus on motivation to intervene in bullying.

METHODS

202 students (M_age = 16.44 years, 52% boys) from public Swedish high schools participated in a vignette experiment. Students were randomized to one of two vignettes (victim belonging to/not belonging to ingroup). Self-report measures of motivation to defend and trait anxiety were used.

RESULTS

Participants reported more autonomous motivation when the victim belonged to the ingroup and more extrinsic motivation when the victim did not belong to the ingroup. Trait anxiety interacted with the manipulation: bystanders high in anxiety reported low levels of autonomous motivation when the victim did not belong to the ingroup and low levels of extrinsic motivation when the victim belonged to the ingroup.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that anti-bullying-programs should focus on how defender motivation is influenced by the way in which victim ingroup status is perceived and address the bystander's level of anxiety as this interacts with such perceptions.