"I was so stunned that I froze and couldn't act.": Understanding Bystander Inaction Among College Students

Students: Dominic Arcuri, Katie Stocks, Nick Bradford, Zach Blaustone

Faculty Mentor: Heather Smith

Psychology

College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts

Before campuses and universities employ bystander intervention training, they should learn about students’ experiences. In this project, we explore the extent to which a student’s focus is directed and how it will shape their decision to help or not help. Even if students notice the situation, their attentional focus could determine whether they intervene. Two hundred sixty-six SSU undergraduates reported their attitudes and experiences toward bias and discrimination, sexual violence, and hazing. Participants indicated whether they always intervened when they saw a problem, or had not at least once. They could then select up to 40 reasons for why they did or did not intervene. We then coded every reason as either focused on the target, the perpetrator, themselves, their peers, or an authority figure. Participants who reported witnessing unhealthy alcohol use, identified as heterosexual, and were in their first year of study consistently demonstrated lower levels of concern about issues like bias, discrimination, and exclusion. Participants who identified as non-heterosexual perceived bias and sexual violence as more significant issues compared to heterosexual participants. However, all participants agreed that students should intervene. Finally, across all three behaviors, self-focused attributions predict people fail to intervene when it relates to hazing. In contrast, perpetrator-focused attributions predict when people always do something to intervene. Our closed coding of students’ reasons for helping or not helping suggests the extent to which the decision to help is driven by an anger-based focus on perpetrators, and the decision not to help might be driven by a fear-based focus on oneself.