Denying Harm, Blaming Victims: Exploring Witness Nonintervention Accounts

• In Event: Theoretical Developments in Learning and Subculture Theories

Abstract

Research in criminology and social psychology has documented the various ways in which third parties (e.g., onlookers, witnesses, bystanders) interpret and respond to crime. Many of the studies have looked at correlates that predict intervention (including calling police). But few of these studies examine how witnesses justify their nonintervention responses afterwards. As “good citizens” are expected to intervene to help their neighbors, nonintervention responses might contribute to what psychologists call cognitive dissonance, a discrepancy between expectation and action. Such dissonance, in turn, may prompt witnesses to use accounts to rationalize their nonintervention responses. In doing so, witnesses may use many of the same social vocabularies that enable offenders to deny culpability for criminal activity, including denying harm and blaming victims.
Based on data collected from an exploratory survey of persons who witnessed violent crime, this study identifies some of the most common vocabularies that nonintervening witnesses use to justify inaction. Like violent behavior itself, accounts that defend or justify violence are learned, shared, and expected by certain audiences. Thus, our study contributes to a broader understanding of witness responses to crime by contextualizing witness accounts as social responses that both normalize violence and justify doing nothing.

Author

• Karen G. Weiss, West Virginia University