title: That's What Friends Are For: Bystander Responses to Friends or Strangers at Risk for Party Rape Victimization.
abstract: The present research examined bystander responses to potential party rape scenarios involving either a friend or a stranger at risk. Undergraduate students (N = 151) imagined attending a party and seeing a man lead an intoxicated woman (friend or stranger) into a bedroom. After random assignment to conditions, participants reported on intentions to help, barriers to helping, victim blame, and empathic concern. As expected, based on their shared social group membership, bystanders intended to offer more help to friends than to strangers. Bystanders also reported more personal responsibility to help and more empathic concern when the potential victim was a friend rather than stranger. Observing a friend versus stranger at risk did not affect audience inhibition or perceived victim blame. Compared with women, men reported more blame and less empathic concern for potential victims. However, there were no gender differences in bystander intent to help or barriers to helping. In multivariate analyses, both responsibility to help and empathic concern for the potential victim uniquely predicted bystanders' intent to help a woman at risk for party rape. Results suggest that promoting social identification with peers at risk could increase bystander intervention.
authors.affiliation: SUNY College at Geneseo, NY, USA katz@geneseo.edu.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Katz
authors.affiliation: SUNY College at Geneseo, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Rena
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pazienza
authors.affiliation: SUNY College at Geneseo, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Olin
authors.affiliation: SUNY College at Geneseo, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Hillary
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rich
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D019548:Crime Victims; D005260:Female; D033062:Friends / Q000523:psychology*; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011902:Rape / Q000517:prevention & control*; D012941:Social Responsibility; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: bystander intervention; party rape; sexual assault