Actual Costs of Bystander Intervention in Street Violence: A Multilevel Analysis

• In Event: Crime Caught on Camera II

Abstract

Studies suggest that the perceived costs of intervention influence bystander behavior. By contrast, the bystander literature offers few empirical insights into the actual costs of intervention. The aim of this study is to examine risk factors exposing intervening bystanders to physical harm. We draw upon a coded sample of CCTV recordings of street violence, each containing bystanders who intervene in street violence. We apply multilevel regression to estimate what individual and context level factors that lead bystander to suffer physical harm. Our (still preliminary) results suggest that bystanders who have a social relationship with victims have a higher likelihood for being exposed to physical harm. In contrast, bystanders who are socially close to the perpetrator and bystanders who are strangers to both victims and perpetrators have a lower actual cost of intervention. These results suggest that perpetrators categorize victims and bystanders with social relationships to victims as part of the same out-group whose members are equally eligible for physical harm.

Authors

• Marie Bruvik Heinskou, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

• Lasse Suonperä Liebst, University of Copenhagen, Denmark