Cross-national CCTV footage shows low victimization risk for bystander interveners in public conflicts.

Abstract

Objective: Accumulating evidence shows that bystanders witnessing public disputes frequently intervene to help. However, little is known regarding the risks entailed for those bystanders who enter the fray to stop conflicts. This study systematically examined the prevalence of bystander victimizations and associated risk factors. Method: Data were a cross-national sample of 93 CCTV video recordings of real-life public disputes, capturing the potential victimizations of 417 intervening and 636 non-intervening bystanders. Results: Data showed that interveners were rarely physically harmed-at a rate of 3.6%-and non-interveners were virtually never victimized. Confirmatory regression results showed that conflict party affiliation was associated with bystander victimization, although only moderately robust. The gender of the intervener was a highly fragile correlate with the outcome. The severity of the conflict at the time of intervention was not found to increase the risk of victimization. Conclusions: Our findings 2 highlight the ecological value of naturalistic observation for bystander research and emphasize the need for evidence-based bystander intervention recommendations. Data, materials, and postprint are available at osf.io/vyutj.

Does Danger Level Affect Bystander Intervention in Real-Life Conflicts? Evidence From CCTV Footage

“…Because video observation and coding are very labor-intensive, we took a stratified random sample of 99 surveillance video clips from a larger set of 219 video clips made available by the police authorities, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in Lancaster, England, and in Cape Town, South Africa, that were previously analyzed for another research question (Liebst et al, 2021). The clips were captured by public surveillance cameras and manually recorded by municipal CCTV operators in the three cities.…”

[Post-print] Reconciliation in human adults: A video-assisted naturalistic observational study of post conflict conciliatory behaviour in interpersonal aggression

“…Recent evidence suggests that this risk is actually low [83]. We add to this optimistic picture by finding that atypical events of third-party victimization may be succeeded by reconciliatory behaviour.…”

“…As such there were no examples of reconciliation with a peacekeeper after moderate violence (hits, kicks, headbutts) or severe violence (kicking or stomping on fallen individual). It remains unclear whether this absence represents and inverse relationship between violence severity and the likelihood of peacekeeper reconciliation, or whether there are just very few examples of moderate and severe violence enacted on intervening third-parties, as suggested by work of Liebst and colleagues [83].…”

“…With third-parties entering the conflicts of others, there is always a risk of aggression being directed away from the former opponent and towards the intervener. A further video surveillance study of public space conflicts shows that around 3.6% of third-party de-escalatory interveners are likely to receive some physical form of aggression-albeit typically mild, such as a push away from the conflict [83]. Therefore, in the current study, we were interested to record whether aggressors would attempt to reconcile with those third-parties interveners they had been actively aggressive towards.…”

Evacuation Behavior in a Subway Train Emergency: A Video-based Analysis

“…For descriptive purposes, we recorded the estimated sex and approximate age of each passenger. These measurements were based on the visual appearance of the individual (see Liebst et al, 2020). We further recorded whether the passenger held an item in their hand (e.g., bag, suitcase, phone, laptop) at the onset of the emergency, picked up an item during the evacuation and whether they dropped any item during the emergency.…”