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Violence / Aggression

(PS8-84) Moderating Role of Situational Norms on the Protective Relationship Between Social Justice Intentions and Harmful Bystander Behavior

Saturday, November 16, 2024
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM EST
Location: Franklin Hall, Level 4, Marriott Downtown
Abstract Text: Bystander intervention programs are an evidence-based approach for sexual violence prevention. A central aim of these programs is to target the “inaction” associated with the bystander effect by empowering bystanders to intervene in helpful or prosocial ways when faced with situations involving sexual violence. However, bystanders may also align with or facilitate situations at risk for sexual violence via engagement in harmful behaviors (e.g., laughing at a sexist joke, propagating rape myths). Indeed, a weakness in the rigor of this work is that few studies have (1) assessed harmful bystander behaviors in vivo within situations at-risk for sexual violence, and (2) experimentally examined individual- and situational-levelvariables that mitigate the likelihood of harmful bystander behaviors. Such work has potential to identify critical targets for bystander intervention programming. The present study aimed to addresses these weaknesses by examining the interactive effect of social justice intentions (SJI; readiness, efficacy, and commitment to engage in actions promoting equity and challenging unjust practices) and exposure to an ambiguous, misogynistic, or prosocial situational norm on harmful bystander behaviors. Undergraduate men (n = 175) completed a measure of SJI and engaged in a virtual reality paradigm where they could respond to sexual risk situations within a house party. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three situational norm conditions (SNC; misogynistic, prosocial, or ambiguous). Harmful bystander behavior was operationalized as responses to scenarios that increased sexual risk towards the victim. Analyses revealed a significant omnibus SJI x SNC interaction (ΔR2 = .043, p = .025). Explication of this interaction indicated that the relation between SJI and harmful bystander behavior was positive in response to the ambiguous norm (b = 0.0179) and negative in response to the misogynistic (b = -.0183) and prosocial norms (b = -.0161). The positive association in response to the ambiguous norm became significantly more negative in response to the misogynistic norm (b = -.036; p = .011) and in response to the prosocial norm (b = -.034; p = .022).Results suggest that salient social norms, whether misogynistic or prosocial, engage men with strong social justice intentions to abstain from harmful bystander behaviors. In addition, these findings underscore the potential impact of bystander intervention programs which aim to strengthen social justice intentions given their potential to curb harmful behavior and subsequently decrease the prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses.