Incorporating bystander intervention into sexual harassment training

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Incorporating bystander intervention into sexual harassment training - Volume 12 Issue 1 - So Yun Lee, Matthew David Hanson, Ho Kwan Cheung

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COMMENTARY
Incorporating bystander intervention into sexual
harassment training
So Yun Lee*, Matthew David Hanson and Ho Kwan Cheung
1University at Albany, State University of New York
*Corresponding author. Email: slee29@albany.edu
Medeiros and Griffith (2019) addressed practical challenges in implementing sexual harassment
(SH) training and proposed several recommendations to improve training effectiveness, par-
ticularly in light of the recent #metoo movement. Although we agree that SH training should
be preventive, and that both internal and external factors must be considered to ensure training
effectiveness, we propose that one perspective that the authors did not consider is bystanders’(i.e.,
observers’) roles in SH incidents. In this commentary, we offer empirically supported, practical
suggestions for the design and application of an effective bystander intervention (BI) training that
can be incorporated into regular victim- and perpetrator-targeted SH training. Furthermore,
although we acknowledge that SH and sexual assault exist on a continuum of sex-based mistreat-
ment and violent behaviors (Fitzgerald, 1993), we focus on SH in this commentary because it is
more often witnessed by a third party.
What is bystander intervention training?
Although SH involves two parties, victim and perpetrator, there is a third party that can po-
tentially play an important role in a SH incident: observers who witness the harassment occur-
ring but are not directly involved (Bowes-Sperry & O’Leary-Kelly, 2005). SH is intrinsically a
manifestation of power, such that perpetrators harass victims as a display of dominance. As a
result, victims are often passive toward such personal violations for fear of retaliation. For in-
stance, they often deny that an act constitutes harassment, downplay the severity of an act, or
avoid the harasser (Baker, Terpstra, & Larntz, 1990; Cortina & Magley, 2003; Farley, 1978).
With such, successfully curtailing SH can be difficult when the focus is on victims’willingness
to act against it. Observers, on the other hand, are in the unique position of being first-hand
witnesses to the situation but not directly related to the conflict, which affords them an
opportunity to intervene. Drawing from classic social psychological work on BI (e.g., Latané
&Darley,1970), the bystander approach highlights the role of observers, proposing that
observers can intervene by engaging in helping behaviors that vary in the extent of immediacy
and involvement, and that whether an observer intervenes depends on individual and situa-
tional factors such as observers’perceptions of SH and organizational ethical climate
(Bowes-Sperry & O’Leary-Kelly, 2005). Specifically, the purpose of BI training is to (a) inform
bystanders of the nature of SH so that they can correctly identify it and (b) encourage bystand-
ers to intervene when they witness instances of SH. Next, we detail the benefits of BI training
and propose practical suggestions to design such training.
© Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2019.
Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2019), 22,52–57
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What are the benefits of bystander intervention training?
The benefits of BI training can manifest at both individual and organizational levels by reinforcing
the unethical nature of SH. Beyond its illegal nature, SH is an ethical issue because it is intrinsically
harmful to victims (Magley, Hulin, Fitzgerald, & DeNardo, 1999), and it therefore involves indi-
viduals’ethical decision-making process about whether to help or harm others (O’Leary-Kelly &
Bowes-Sperry, 2001). Past research has suggested that one critical antecedent to ethical decision
making is moral intensity, or the degree to which individuals regard an issue as having a moral
component. Therefore, increasing the level of moral intensity should be a key component in
training people to make ethical decisions (i.e., not engaging in SH and helping SH victims).
Incorporating BI training into SH training can create a synergistic effect because regular SH train-
ing may only impact potential perpetrators and victims, but BI training will strengthen the moral
intensity of all members of a community, including victims, bystanders, and even perpetrators.
Specifically, greater moral intensity via BI training may influence the ethical actions of bystand-
ers through social consensus, a component of moral intensity that represents the extent of social
agreement that a behavior is either bad or good (Jones, 1991). Unfortunately, the definition of
SH is relatively ambiguous (Roehling & Huang, 2018), and, therefore, social consensus regarding
what constitutes SH also tends to be low (O’Leary-Kelly & Bowes-Sperry, 2001). Although regular
SH training aims to decrease ambiguity surrounding the definition of SH, BI training can further
facilitate social consensus of SH among employees, in that everyone within an organization is
responsible for taking action against SH. Given that victims are more likely to show a passive
reaction and often refuse to reveal their cases, a social consensus among bystanders is vital for
more SH occurrences to be reported.
Beyond the individual level, implementing BI training can help organizations set a higher
degree of moral intensity by communicating a stronger message of low organizational tolerance
for SH than when simply implementing regular SH training. Past meta-analytic evidence suggests
that perceived organizational tolerance for SH is the most important predictor for workplace SH
and bystanders’reactions to SH (Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007). As a result, a decrease in organi-
zational tolerance, as signaled by the incorporation of BI training into regular SH training, can
have a cascading effect on employees to accept a higher level of moral intensity by leading them to
perceive that an organization takes SH as a more serious, moral issue.
The addition of BI training may also have a unique effect on potential perpetrators of SH over
and above that of SH training. Greater moral intensity via BI training may influence the potential
actions of perpetrators by expanding their scope of consideration to bystanders, thus increasing
the perceived risks of engaging in SH (O’Leary-Kelly & Bowes-Sperry, 2001). Perpetrators may
keep engaging in SH behaviors because they perceive that victims are the only people who will
be affected by their actions and view them as negative. Potential perpetrators who attend a BI
training with other employees, however, may learn that others will be more aware of SH and
consider SH a more serious ethical violation. This realization, in turn, may prompt perpetrators
to extend their consideration beyond merely victims to also include bystanders. These potential
perpetrators may also realize that bystanders are trained to act against SH, thus increasing the
perceived risk associated with committing SH (e.g., higher probability of SH being revealed,
expulsion from social group). These additional considerations and increased perceived risks
can ultimately decrease the likelihood that perpetrators will follow through with the intention to
harass. Next, we propose practical suggestions to design BI training.
What are the suggestions for effective bystander intervention training?
The practical suggestions for effective BI training applied to the SH context that we propose
here are rooted in Latané’s and Darley’s(1970) five-step cognitive and behavioral process that
bystanders must advance through in emergency situations if they are to help. Specifically,
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Latané and Darley (1970) outlined five barriers to bystander helping behavior, including (a) failure
to notice that a situation is occurring, (b) failure to identify that a situation is high risk, (c) failure
to feel responsible to intervene in what is occurring, (d) failure to intervene due to skill deficits,
and (e) failure to intervene due to the fear of looking foolish. SH training should aid in overcoming
the failure to identify that a situation is high risk, considering that it provides information about
what constitutes SH, but successfully implemented BI training also has the potential to overcome
each of the other four barriers.
Remove barriers to bystander intervention behaviors
First, a successful BI training teaches trainees how to be more vigilant in noticing what is occurring
around them by increasing awareness of the ongoing situation. Specifically, the training could
include a module that allows the trainees to practice evaluating ambiguous scenes and provides
them feedback on which situations in each scene they correctly and incorrectly evaluate. Second,
a successful BI training teaches trainees that they are responsible for what occurs around them
regardless of how many other employees are also around at any given time by encouraging trainees
to more automatically intervene in a situation. Specifically, the BI training could include a module
that allows them to practice intervening in an emergency situation while in a group setting. Third,
a successful BI training teaches trainees the skills necessary to competently intervene in a SH
situation. Specifically, the BI training could include a module that allows trainees to practice those
skills until they feel comfortable enough to perform them automatically. Finally, a successful
BI training should teach trainees that their intervention will not be perceived negatively by others.
Specifically, the BI training could include a module where interventions are honestly evaluated by
peers to allow the trainees to receive support from their peers after each intervention. Although
these modules are not an exhaustive list of possibilities in BI training, making sure to address each
of Latané’s and Darley’s(1970) four barriers to bystander helping behavior mentioned above
should result in a successful BI training applied to an SH situation.
Break sexual harassment myths
Another way to facilitate bystander intervening behaviors is to break SH myths. SH myths refer to
attitudes and beliefs that are generally false but are widely and persistently held, and that serve to
deny and justify male SH of women (Lonsway, Cortina, & Magley, 2008). One of the most com-
mon content domains of SH myths is to attribute responsibility for the event to the victim. Such
beliefs, like women with certain characteristics (e.g., sexually loose or dressed improperly) are
more likely to get sexually harassed, misguides people to believe that those victims deserved their
misfortunes (Lerner, 1980; Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994). Another common myth regarding SH is
that victims often lie or misinterpret the perpetrator’s behaviors as SH. Recent evidence suggests
that the prevalence of false accusations of SH is only between 2% and 10%, but those small num-
bers of cases are widely publicized through the media, leading people to overestimate the rate of
false accusations (Lonsway, Archambault, & Lisak, 2009; Lonsway & Fitzgerald, 1994).
Those negative attitudes and beliefs against victims can function as the barriers to bystander
behaviors that were proposed by Latané and Darley (1970). First of all, acceptance of SH myths
may lead observers to fail to recognize a situation as high risk by increasing the ambiguity of a
situation. Furthermore, SH myths are often associated with people’s just world belief, which is the
predisposition to believe that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad
people (Lerner, 1965). Based on this just world belief, observers attribute the responsibility of
incidents to the victims, and feel less responsibility to intervene in high-risk situations. In fact,
acceptance of SH myths is found to predict negative attitudes toward victims (Sakalli-Uğurlu,
Yalçin, & Glick, 2007) and decrease bystanders’willingness to intervene in situations (Bannon,
Brosi, & Foubert, 2013; Burns, 2009). Considering the negative impacts caused by SH myths,
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it is critical to challenge those myths during the training by identifying counterexamples of SH
myths and suggesting evidence to discredit them.
Promote empathy
In addition to considering SH myths, empathy is found to be an important predictor of attitudes
toward victims. Empathy indicates an “other-focused”emotional response that allows one to
make an affective connection with another (Batson, Turk, Shaw, & Klein, 1995). Deitz, Blackwell,
Daley, and Bentley (1982) and Sakalli-Uğurlu et al. (2007) found that participants who were
higher in empathy expressed more positive feelings toward rape victims and negative feelings to-
ward harassers. These positive and negative feelings are expected to influence a bystander’s attri-
bution of responsibility in SH incidents, leading to a greater likelihood of intervening behaviors.
Past diversity training research suggests that perspective taking is an effective strategy to in-
crease empathy. Perspective taking refers to the cognitive ability to consider situations from the
viewpoint, feelings, and reactions of others (Dovidio, Gartner, & Validzic, 1998). Considering that
perspective taking requires individuals to think more in terms of “us”rather than “them,”it may
reduce stereotypes regarding victims and encourage bystanders to form social bonds with victims
(Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005). Empirical studies have supported this reasoning that people
who actively engage in perspective taking are more likely to show empathic responses, including
understanding and identifying with their experiences (Egan, 1990) and wanting to offer helping
behaviors to the targets (Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, 2002). Therefore, in order to encourage
bystanders to take more action in SH, BI training should include activities to build perspective
taking, which can effectively promote empathy among trainees.
Costs and benefits analysis
Although removing barriers, breaking myths, and promoting empathy may increase the likelihood
of observers intervening in SH incidents, an observer’s level of involvement is dependent upon net
costs of behaviors (Bowes-Sperry & O’Leary-Kelly, 2005). That is, even when observers decide to
intervene, they weigh the costs and benefits of intervening to make a decision about how much
they involve themselves in an observed situation. Ryan and Wessel (2012) also found consistent
results that people who perceived an intervention as high in benefits and low in costs were more
likely to show greater involvement in SH situations.
Bowes-Sperry and O’Leary-Kelly (2005) defined involvement in a public and social sense,
proposing that involvement should reflect the degree of willingness of individuals to take action
on social stages. Therefore, high involvement indicates a stronger public connection of observers
to incidents, such as directly confronting a harasser or publicly offering a hand to a target. On the
other hand, low involvement is associated with more indirect and weaker social connections,
including providing private support for the target or anonymously reporting an incident to a third
party (McDonald, Charlesworth, & Graham, 2015).
Although there currently is no established empirical evidence to support that a high level
of involvement is more advantageous than a low level of involvement, stronger reactions from
observers can be beneficial for two reasons: First, they aid in constructing a meaning of an event
and providing a role model to other observers. High-involvement responses clearly indicate that
observers interpret an incident as SH, playing a significant role in determining the meaning of
events (Yagil, Karnieli-Miller, Eisikovits, & Enosh, 2006). Second, those observers who failed to
intervene due to skill deficits can learn from the observer’s intervening behavior through role
modeling. Considering the social sense of the definition, a high level of involvement should benefit
more than a low level of involvement because actions taken in public are more salient to other
bystanders than actions taken in a private setting. With all of these potential benefits of a bystand-
er’s high-involvement intervention, a training should focus on increasing the perceived benefits
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and reducing the perceived costs of intervening. Benefits of intervening include future reciprocity
from the coworker and positive feelings about oneself. Costs include perceived risk in reporting
and the possibility of becoming a target oneself (Bowes-Sperry & O’Leary-Kelly, 2005).
Conclusion
We argue that the practical challenges in implementing SH training and the recommendations to
improve the training effectiveness that were proposed by Medeiros and Griffith (2019) could have
benefited greatly by including the role of the observer in SH situations. Adding BI training to the
SH training can have several benefits at the organizational and individual level by decreasing an
organization’s perceived tolerance for SH, increasing the level of moral intensity, improving the
understanding of SH, and raising the awareness of potential perpetrators regarding their behav-
iors. We also provide some practical suggestions with empirical and theoretical evidence. During
the BI training, removing the five barriers that were outlined by Latané and Darley (1970), break-
ing SH myths, and improving empathy are critical to increase the likelihood of bystanders inter-
vening in high-risk situations. Furthermore, the training should also focus on providing observers
with more perceived benefits and reducing the costs of intervening behaviors in order to increase
their level of involvement.
Last, although we believe that our argument for BI training is theoretically and empirically
grounded, we encourage future research to examine the effectiveness of incorporating BI training
into regular SH training. Specifically, studies can compare training effectiveness among regular
SH training, BI training, and a combined training (i.e., BI training and regular SH training).
Furthermore, as echoed by past SH researchers, the benefits of high-involvement responses that
we suggested, as well as the typology of observers’response to SH proposed by O’Leary-Kelly and
Bowes-Sperry (2005), have not yet been empirically tested (Willness et al., 2007). Therefore, future
research needs to test whether bystanders’intervention of a certain a level of involvement and
immediacy is more advantageous in protecting SH victims and preventing high-risk incidents.
Author ORCIDs. Ho Kwan Cheung 0000-0002-8516-5466
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Cite this article: Lee S.Y., Hanson M.D., and Cheung H.K. (2019). Incorporating bystander intervention into sexual
harassment training. Industrial and Organizational Psychology ,52–57. https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2019.8
Industrial and Organizational Psychology 57
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