If I'm reading the statistics in the study correctly [0], most of these 80 incidents (70%) were pulled from CCTV footage at a "night time drinking setting." Groups of 18 people on average standing around bars, presumably outside. In 20% of cases someone de-escalated, 5% of the time a bystander joined in to escalate the violent encounter, and 4% it was a mix of escalation/de-escalation. Presumably the rest of the time no one intervened.
This is not an ideal setting to analyze the bystander effect. People are drunk. People know each other. People may have just met but started bonding over alcohol (and cigarettes, if we are outside the bar). Seems more like a study of the behavior of drunk people than anything else.
Fair warning, I'm not great at interpreting statistics nor reading sociological studies, I prefer to read about medicine. I'm open to being corrected.
Yeah but we re talking about the real world. If we re honest, when do most conflicts arise with bystanders ready? When people are drunk at night... (or similarly mentally impaired maybe? why do people have open conflicts in the streets in the first place should be part of the theory).
So you might say that if the theory didnt take alcohol, nights and all your factors into account, then it was as useful as considering investors as rational in an econ theory and predicted nothing worth predicting.
Bystander effect is more than just street fights at 1am.
When I saw the title of this piece, my first thought was an emergency situation (eg - automobile accident, building on fire).
Did the study even determine whether bystanders were independent individuals or had a prior relationship to the belligerents? If the second one then it feels like the study is invalidated.
Intervention by a drunk to stop the fight of more-drunks is part of standard bar protocol, plus inhibitions are lower thanks to alcohol
Doubtful it represents most real bystander situations where you actually need to make a choice, like situations in daily life where you are busy going about your business (rather than being in a bar literally for this sort of fun), or low key stuff like bullying, harassment, etc etc.
I think people realize too the bar scene attracts shady characters who may retaliate and drag you into an escalating drama you don't want to stick around and find out and have to start dodging bullets or knifes or something outrageous.
This is not an ideal setting to analyze the bystander effect. People are drunk. People know each other. People may have just met but started bonding over alcohol (and cigarettes, if we are outside the bar). Seems more like a study of the behavior of drunk people than anything else.
Fair warning, I'm not great at interpreting statistics nor reading sociological studies, I prefer to read about medicine. I'm open to being corrected.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790599/