Bullying participant roles and gender as predictors of bystander intervention

Abstract

Although the importance of peer bystanders in bullying has been recognized, there are few studies that examine the phenomenon in relation to Latané and Darley's (1970) classic Bystander Intervention Model, which states that there are five stages of bystander intervention: (i) notice the event; (ii) interpret the event as an emergency that requires assistance; (iii) accept responsibility for intervening; (iv) know how to intervene or provide help; and (v) implement intervention decisions. This study examined preliminary evidence of reliability and validity of the Bystander Intervention Model in Bullying (Nickerson, Aloe, Livingston, & Feeley, 2014), and the extent to which bullying role behavior (bullying, assisting, victimization, defending, and outsider behavior) and gender predicted each step of the model with a sample of 299 middle school students. Results of a Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported a five-factor structure of the measure corresponding to the steps of the model. There was evidence of convergent validity and Cronbach alpha for each subscale exceeded .75. In addition, students who reported defending their peers were more likely to also engage in all five steps of the bystander intervention model, while victims were more likely to notice events, and outsiders were less likely to intervene. Gender differences and gender interactions were also found. Aggr. Behav. 43:281-290, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Bystanders of bullying: Social-cognitive and affective reactions to school bullying and cyberbullying

“…This model is useful not only in explaining bystander behavior in the case of physical harm, but also in situations of social abuse like bullying. The five steps of the intervention process already have been successfully operationalized for bullying and sexual harassment (Nickerson, Aloe, Livingston, & Feeley, 2014) and connected to the Participant Roles (Jenkins & Nickerson, 2017): Defenders were more likely to pass through all five stages, whereas outsiders failed in the last step of implementing the intervention. Bullying and assisting were not associated to any of the five steps.…”

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Happiness, and Prosocial Bystander Behavior in Bullying

“…Specifically, it leads bystanders to defend the victims, comfort them, or alert adults about bullying episodes (Sutton and Smith, 1999;Reijntjes et al, 2016). Unsurprisingly, the adoption of prosocial behavior of bystanders contributes to reducing bullying and its negative effects on the victims (Salmivalli, 2010;Polanin et al, 2012;Twemlow and Sacco, 2013;Machackova and Pfetsch, 2016;Jenkins and Nickerson, 2017). Nonetheless, only a small number of bystanders have been found to adopt prosocial behaviors in bullying episodes (Barhight et al, 2013;Olenik-Shemesh et al, 2017;Waasdorp and Bradshaw, 2018).…”

Physicians' norms and attitudes towards substance use in colleague physicians: A cross-sectional survey in the Netherlands

“…A frequently cited reason for taking no action was the expectation that someone else would take care of the problem (bystander effect) [5,32,35]. Such bystander effect has repeatedly been observed in dangerous and nondangerous emergencies in different contexts [43], including for instance when witnessing cardiac arrest [44], bullying [45], sexual violence [46], or drug overdose [47]. The decision to take action is explained by the five steps of the bystander or social intervention model [48].…”