Crime Severity and Social Distance Influence Bystanders’ Willingness to Cooperate

• In Event: Variation in Support for the Criminal Legal System

Abstract

Some estimate that half of all crimes are witnessed by someone, yet studies find that the rate of bystander reporting is less than 50%. The purpose of this study was to examine how crime severity and social distance influence bystanders’ willingness to cooperate. About 1,400 participants read and responded to three vignettes describing a crime. Across the vignettes, crime severity, bystanders’ relationship to the victim, and bystanders’ relationship to the perpetrator were manipulated. A multilevel model was estimated because the vignettes were clustered within individual respondents. Results showed that 1) crime severity increased the willingness to report the crime to police, but had no effect on the willingness to provide a statement to police; 2) Participants were less willing to the report the crime when the perpetrator was a family member, but only when the victim was a stranger; and 3) Participants were more willing to provide a statement when the perpetrator was a family member, but only when the victim was a friend. Prior studies often consider the willingness to report and provide a statement as two indicators of the willingness to cooperate, but this study suggests the influence of situational factors varies across them.

Authors

• Bailey L. Saldana, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

• Matthew West, Southern Illinois University Carbondale