The traditional methods of bystander intervention

Abstract 

Apparently, there will be several times in the course of someone’s life when he/she can intervene and stop a potential dangerous situation or anything band from happening to another person in their eyes or presence, such as stopping a person from committing suicide, driving drunk, sexual assault or bullying behaviors. The traditional methods of bystander intervention include encouraging women to mainly protect themselves from sexual assault by not drinking alone or too much and walking alone. However, even with all these precautions in place, they cannot effectively prevent crime from taking place while the responsibility and duty are solemnly placed on the victim. As a partner, friend, family or classmate, it is your responsibility to do something to stop abuses that occur in your presence. This paper attempts to explore the bystander intervention and how the bystander can effectively confront abuses in case they take place. 

Introduction 

The bystander intervention is described as a social psychological phenomenon, where a person offers a means of help to a victim when something bad is happening to him/her in his/her presence ( Borsky et al. 2018). The opposite of this concept called bystander effect/apathy took place when a psychologists Bibb Lante and John Darley, after the sad incident with Kitty Genovese (this is why sometimes it is termed as "Genovese syndrome”. A brief of Kitty Genovese's incident: Kitty Genovese was murdered in 1964, in Queens, New York by Winston Mosely. She was returning home from her work when Mosely approached her, as she ran towards her door after seeing Mosley, he stabbed her in the back twice, and ran away. Genovese then cried for help for approximately 10 minutes but nothing happened, after 10 minutes Mosley came back saw her in such state and then stabbed her several times, raped her and left. Regardless of the fact that several people witnessed the occurrence and none did anything but only a nearby walker hearing the voices offered to provide a bystander intervention for the situation by calling the police ( Borsky et al. 2018) . When the police arrived, it was way too late. Various studies have shown that bystander intervention is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders, i.e. greater the number of people more is the chances that the person will not help. 

The bystander intervention 

Palmer, Nicksa and McMahon (2018) argue that bystander intervention is “a social psychological phenomenon in which the more people there are viewing a crisis or crime; the more likely they are to offer aid to the victim(s).” The simplest thing to do is to imagine yourself in that situation – would you not want to be helped? There is use leaning on ‘’ bystander intervention’’ for our indifference. Even if walking away might be the easiest option but being human means standing up for each other and being there for each other. An example of how human beings subconsciously decide acting against their moral in order to be part of the mass is provided when we consider the horrors of the Holocaust. After confronting these crimes of incredible proportion, people often ask, “How could this have happened? Why did anyone not stop the Nazis?” However, it is true that apart from some outstanding men and women few people dared to stand up for their fellow Jewish citizens. In many situations, it would have been possible to show resistance or disagreement without even getting in risk personally. The great parts of the population would have not apparently succumbed due to the bystander intervention and avoided getting involved in any kind of incident. 

Becoming a truly adult involves realizing that  it could have been me , in a situation like a car crash, cancer diagnosis, or violent crime (including terrorist attack), and that if I find myself in the middle of something like that, I need to choose the right choices and act the right way. Once you are in that situation, it is already too late to avoid being in it, and now you have to react in it, not stand around idly trying to mentally deny it, that is, having your brain refuse to believe that it’s  really real , that it’s really happening (not a TV or movie screen) and it is really happening to  me . And now I may have to do something really unusual, like first run for cover and then call 911 and then beat somebody’s head and maybe get stabbed while I a m doing it. Or maybe jump up and run over and give someone the Heimlich maneuver. Or maybe run over and start controlling their bleeding with my shirt and some direct pressure, or my belt as a tourniquet. This is not a movie, it is just the banality of evil, and it is real life. 

And there is something in it for myself: people are going to talk later about what happened, and who did what. I can choose right now, which guy I want to be later. I can choose right now whether I want later to be the guy who everyone praises, the guy who jumped in and did the right thing, or to be “that guy”—the guy who stood around like an idiot or coward, failing to do the right thing. We do not know for sure, but it is hard to imagine that anybody of the spectators stood up against this chicane (Thornberg, Landgren & Wiman, 2018). On the contrary, just by being present and silently watching every single individual even “approves” the behavior of the Nazi officers. This is not because they are absolutely evil people. This is because they are an anonymous mass of seemingly not related people who feel like their presence do have neither good nor bad impacts on the situation. Shortly said, a perfect example of how the Bystander effect turns innocuous citizens into perpetrators. 

In a human life everyone will be confronted with injustice, offence or violence. The Bystander intervention teaches a very powerful lesson, the lesson that even good-minded people can be easily subject to the diffusion of responsibility. If it be standing up against bullying at school or boycotting genocide, it is as a first step indispensable to be aware of the wide responsibility every individual has and to be conscious about the flaws of intentional behavior. Actually acting accordingly is the next step and will presumably require some courage and readiness. However, history shows that many humans are not fearful and browbeaten bystanders, but become brave, admirable and unafraid upstanders. 

Conclusion 

The bystander intervention is a phenomenon where people who observe any incident (usually an emergency of sorts), respond to it. When someone screams out for help, that is a clear, undisputed emergency, and in that case whether you help or not depends on whether you are a helpful person or not. This is  really an instance of the bystander intervention. However, if you see (for instance) a man lying on the side of the pavement/footpath — not explicitly in trouble or danger, then that may qualify as a situation where you may be required to offer bystander intervention to help the person. This is because you have to determine whether the man is a homeless person taking a nap, or whether he’s someone who collapsed there and needs immediate help. In such a situation, before going up to the man and asking him if he is okay, it is likely that you will look for clues in your environment to understand how you should react. You may look for cues in others on the street to determine whether this man should be left alone or whether you should wake him up/ask him of everything is alright. If you go up to this guy and check on him, you have actually done what is expected to be done by a bystander ntervnetion. 

References 

Borsky, A. E., McDonnell, K., Turner, M. M., & Rimal, R. (2018). Raising a red flag on dating violence: Evaluation of a low-resource, college-based bystander behavior intervention program.  Journal of interpersonal violence ,  33 (22), 3480-3501. 

Palmer, J. E., Nicksa, S. C., & McMahon, S. (2018). Does who you know affect how you act? The impact of relationships on bystander intervention in interpersonal violence situations.  Journal of interpersonal violence ,  33 (17), 2623-2642. 

Thornberg, R., Landgren, L., & Wiman, E. (2018). ‘It Depends’: A qualitative study on how adolescent students explain bystander intervention and non-intervention in bullying situations.  School psychology international ,  39 (4), 400-415.