ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9128-1896

Date of Award

Summer 2024

Language

English

Embargo Period

7-20-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

School of Criminal Justice

Program

Criminal Justice

First Advisor

Theodore Wilson

Committee Members

Brandon Behlendorf, Dana Peterson, Kathleen Heide

Keywords

bias, hate crime, bystander intervention, situational model, bystander decision-making

Subject Categories

Criminology and Criminal Justice

Abstract

Hate crimes against Asian Americans and LGBT individuals have been on the rise within the U.S. in the past few years (UCR, 2024). Although these offenses tend to occur in public, numerous stories in the media highlight that few bystanders choose to intervene. To unveil why bystanders choose not to intervene, this dissertation explored the extent to which 1,001 U.S. adults engaged with the five-step situational model for bystander intervention proposed by Latané and Darley (1970). Respondents were recruited through Qualtrics and randomly assigned to a hate scenario involving one of six victims: an Asian American man, an Asian American woman, a gay man, a lesbian, a trans man, and a trans woman. The hate scenario escalates such that it begins with a microaggression that then leads to a hate incident before culminating in a hate crime. Study 1 examined whether there was a relationship between increased incident severity as the hate scenario progresses and increased respondent engagement with the situational model. Bystander heterogeneity was also explored through a latent class analysis of bystander progression through each phase of the hate scenario. The latent classes of bystanders then served as one of the dependent variables for the next two studies. Study 2 examined whether bystander progress through the situational model differed based upon the victim’s identity. Study three tested whether bystander characteristics such as empathy, bystander efficacy, and regard for others predict bystander latent class.

Several key findings emerged from these three studies. First, bystander progress through the situational model indeed increases as the hate event escalates. This relationship was observed through examining whether the bystander saw a problem, whether the bystander intervened, and the number of steps the bystander proceeded through in the situational model. Second, three latent classes of bystanders were found in this sample: always interveners, those who progressed further through the model as the event escalated, and those who never intervened. Third, situational model progress significantly differed based on the identity of the victim. This most prominently occurred with subjects being significantly more likely to see a problem and intervene for the Asian woman victim than the sexual minority and gender minority victims. Lastly, the bystander’s favorability towards the victim’s group was consistently the strongest predictor of whether the bystander saw a problem or intervened followed by empathy, bystander behavior, and bystander efficacy. These results together will help to inform the applicability of the situational model to hate as well as the cognitive mechanisms that can be leveraged to enhance the probability of intervention.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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