ArticlePublisher preview available

Would I Be Helped? Cross-National CCTV Footage Shows That Intervention Is the Norm in Public Conflicts

American Psychological Association
American Psychologist
Authors:
Richard Philpot at Lancaster University
Richard Philpot
Lasse Liebst at University of Copenhagen
Lasse Liebst
Mark Levine at University of Exeter
Mark Levine
Wim Bernasco at Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement
Wim Bernasco
Show all 5 authorsHide
Read publisher preview
Download citation
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

Half a century of research on bystander behavior concludes that individuals are less likely to intervene during an emergency when in the presence of others than when alone. By contrast, little is known regarding the aggregated likelihood that at least someone present at an emergency will do something to help. The importance of establishing this aggregated intervention baseline is not only of scholarly interest but is also the most pressing question for actual public victims-will I receive help if needed? The current article describes the largest systematic study of real-life bystander intervention in actual public conflicts captured by surveillance cameras. Using a unique cross-national video dataset from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and South Africa (N = 219), we show that in 9 of 10 public conflicts, at least 1 bystander, but typically several, will do something to help. We record similar likelihoods of intervention across the 3 national contexts, which differ greatly in levels of perceived public safety. Finally, we find that increased bystander presence is related to a greater likelihood that someone will intervene. Taken together these findings allay the widespread fear that bystanders rarely intervene to help. We argue that it is time for psychology to change the narrative away from an absence of help and toward a new understanding of what makes intervention successful or unsuccessful. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
A preview of this full-text is provided by American Psychological Association.
Learn more
Content available from American Psychologist 
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
Would I Be Helped? Cross-National CCTV Footage Shows That
Intervention Is the Norm in Public Conflicts
Richard Philpot
Lancaster University and University of Copenhagen
Lasse Suonperä Liebst
University of Copenhagen
Mark Levine
Lancaster University and University of Exeter
Wim Bernasco
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law
Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam
Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard
Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
and University of Copenhagen
Half a century of research on bystander behavior concludes that individuals are less likely
to intervene during an emergency when in the presence of others than when alone. By
contrast, little is known regarding the aggregated likelihood that at least someone present
at an emergency will do something to help. The importance of establishing this aggre-
gated intervention baseline is not only of scholarly interest but is also the most pressing
question for actual public victims—will I receive help if needed? The current article
describes the largest systematic study of real-life bystander intervention in actual public
conflicts captured by surveillance cameras. Using a unique cross-national video dataset
from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and South Africa (N⫽219), we show that
in 9 of 10 public conflicts, at least 1 bystander, but typically several, will do something
to help. We record similar likelihoods of intervention across the 3 national contexts,
which differ greatly in levels of perceived public safety. Finally, we find that increased
bystander presence is related to a greater likelihood that someone will intervene. Taken
together these findings allay the widespread fear that bystanders rarely intervene to help.
We argue that it is time for psychology to change the narrative away from an absence of
help and toward a new understanding of what makes intervention successful or
unsuccessful.
Keywords: bystander effect, bystander intervention, aggression and violence, dangerous
emergencies, helping and prosocial behavior
This article was published Online First June 3, 2019.
Richard Philpot, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University,
and Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen; Lasse Suon-
perä Liebst, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen; Mark
Levine, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, and Depart-
ment of Psychology, University of Exeter; Wim Bernasco, Netherlands
Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Am-
sterdam, the Netherlands, and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam; Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard, Netherlands
Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), and
Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen.
The authors would like to thank Laura Behrend Pedersen, Kasper
Lykke Dausel, Jonathan Salka and Nor Voldum-Clausen for their
important input and assistance in the coding of data. Helpful comments
from reviewers and the editor, as well as discussions with Peter Ejbye-
Ernst and Poul Poder, greatly improved earlier versions of this article.
This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council [EPSRC – 1402902] and the Danish Council for
Independent Research [DFF – 6109-00210]. The funders had no role in
the design of the paper, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of
the manuscript.
Replication data, statistical scripts, and video coding procedures are
made available on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/xzjsg.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard
Philpot, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1
4YF, United Kingdom. E-mail: r.philpot@lancaster.ac.uk
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
American Psychologist
© 2019 American Psychological Association 2020, Vol. 75, No. 1, 66–75
0003-066X/20/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000469
66
... However, a decade-old meta-analysis (Fischer et al., 2011) demonstrates that the bystander effect does not hold for violent or dangerous emergencies (like the George Floyd case) and indeed that the presence of others can result in a "reverse bystander effect," namely, an increased likelihood of intervention in the presence of others than when alone. More recent work analyzing CCTV footage of public aggression and violence in three countries (Netherlands, South Africa, and the United Kingdom; Philpot et al., 2020) shows that some bystander intervention is highly likely to occur (in 9 out of 10 incidents). ...
... The most striking thing to note from the analysis is how much bystander intervention occurred and how willing the bystanders were to persevere in circumstances, which were both distressing and frustrating. This is very much in keeping with the body of evidence from research using CCTV data, which shows that levels of intervention in these kinds of violent, public space events are high (Levine et al., 2011;Liebst et al., 2019;Philpot et al., 2020). It is also important to remember that the bystanders were strangers to each other, and to George Floyd, and had no preexisting bonds of affiliation to draw on. ...
Bystanders and the Murder of George Floyd: Analyzing Bystander Intervention in the Course of a Police Killing
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2025
Using a detailed transcription, obtained from body-camera, CCTV, and smartphone footage of the murder of George Floyd, we examine the behavior of bystanders as events unfolded. Analysis reveals 205 direct verbal bystander interventions comprised of five forms (declaratives, assessments, interrogatives, imperatives, insults). We also describe the key physical intervention strategies deployed by the bystanders. We show that bystanders prioritize interventions based on what they “know” (rather than asking questions or making demands). We suggest that this is because assessment-based strategies are less likely to be seen as a direct challenge to the power of the police and therefore have more chance of inducing constructive engagement. Although bystanders were ultimately unsuccessful in persuading the police to change course, we identify five moments in the action sequences where the assessment concerns of the bystanders were taken up by the officers—albeit fleetingly. We argue that these bystander interventions create the opportunity for officers to break the pattern of behavior that will lead to murder. It is a failure of the officers and not the bystanders that the police are unable to take those opportunities. We argue that assessment-based interventions have the potential to breach structural and situational power dynamics that usually lead to bystander interventions being overridden or ignored. We conclude by drawing some wider implications for the way bystanders and police officers can be trained to improve the safety of individuals caught up in police arrests.
View
... Liebst et al., 2020), as well as the role of bystanders in conflicts in public space (e.g. Ejbye-Ernst, 2022; Levine et al., 2011;Philpot et al., 2020). Fortunately, the use of videos in policing research is on the rise, with more researchers investing time and resources into obtaining, coding and analysing videos that have recorded relevant events such as crowd policing, de-escalation techniques, use of force, and citizen resistance in action . ...
... The ethogram method has been used for such comparisons too; for example, in a study of consolation behaviour in street fights compared to armed robberies , the impact of danger on bystander intervention across national city contexts , and variation in patterns of consolation behaviour in humans and chimpanzees (Lindegaard et al., 2017), were analysed. In cases where bio-evolutionary explanations are not adopted, the use of the ethogram often leads researchers to maintain an interest in identifying universal behavioural expressions that humans employ in connection with a given activity -for example, universal forms of behaviour through which humans de-escalate interpersonal violence (Pallante et al., 2023;Philpot et al., 2020). In the context of policing, such a comparison approach would allow for theorizing patterns found across contexts and contribute to the current lack of theory development and theory testing, as pointed out by, for example, Terrill (2014). ...
View
... A classical illustration of this is research on bystander intervention in emergencies, which shows that the presence of additional bystanders may reduce each bystander's willingness to intervene [22]. If this reduction is substantial, it could outweigh the safety-innumbers dynamic where a larger crowd offers more opportunities for helping victims (though see Philpot et al [23]). Consequently, an increase in the number of bystanders may counterintuitively reduce the likelihood of any bystander intervening. ...
Association Between Social Distancing Compliance and Public Place Crowding During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-Sectional Observational Study Using Computer Vision to Analyze Surveillance Footage
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2025
Background Social distancing behavior has been a critical nonpharmaceutical measure for mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason, there has been widespread interest in the factors determining social distancing violations, with a particular focus on individual-based factors. Objective In this paper, we examine an alternative and less appreciated indicator of social distancing violations: the situational opportunity for maintaining interpersonal distance in crowded settings. This focus on situational opportunities is borrowed from criminology, where it offers an alternative to individual-based explanations of crime and rule violations. We extend this approach to the COVID-19 pandemic context, suggesting its relevance in understanding distancing compliance behavior. Methods Our data comprise a large collection of video clips (n=56,429) from public places in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, captured by municipal surveillance cameras throughout the first year of the pandemic. We automatized the analysis of this footage using a computer vision algorithm designed for pedestrian detection and estimation of metric distances between individuals in the video still frames. This method allowed us to record social distancing violations of over half a million individuals (n=539,127) across more and less crowded street contexts. Results The data revealed a clear positive association between crowding and social distancing violations, evident both at the individual level and when aggregated per still frame. At the individual level, the analysis estimated that each additional 10 people present increased the likelihood of a distancing violation by 9 percentage points for a given pedestrian. At the aggregated level, there was an estimated increase of approximately 6 additional violations for every 10 additional individuals present, with a very large R ² of 0.80. Additionally, a comparison with simulation data indicated that street spaces should, in principle, provide sufficient room for people to pass each other while maintaining a 1.5-meter distance. This suggests that pedestrians tend to gravitate toward others, even when ample space exists to maintain distance. Conclusions The direct positive relationship between crowding and distancing violations suggests that potential transmission encounters can be identified by simply counting the number of people present in a location. Our findings thus provide a reliable and scalable proxy measure of distancing noncompliance that offers epidemiologists a tool to easily incorporate real-life behavior into predictive models of airborne contagious diseases. Furthermore, our results highlight the need for scholars and public health agencies to consider the situational factors influencing social distancing violations, especially those related to crowding in public settings.
View
... The above findings offer an alternative perspective to that of Philpot et al. (2020) who investigated bystanders' interventions in public conflicts. These researchers compiled a cross-national video dataset from surveillance cameras in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and SA, with a total of 219 participants. ...
Conversations through the rear-view mirror: Uber drivers' narratives on the precarity of work, 'belonging', and violence Conversations through the rear-view mirror: Uber drivers' narratives on the precarity of work, 'belonging', and violence
Article
Full-text available
  • Jan 2025
There has been a rapid increase in crimes against e-hailing drivers in South Africa (SA) since the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. This study explores the narratives about interpersonal violence among black and migrant Uber drivers who navigate through peri-urban neighborhoods in Cape Town, SA. Their narratives unearth the cultural and socio-geographic understandings of violence within increasingly impoverished, violent, and marginalized areas. Moreover, the narratives highlight the peri-urban geographies of precarity, labor, and the ways in which interpersonal violence impacts their mobility and lives. Theoretical arguments emerge on 'safety' and 'embodied fear' that Uber drivers experience in peri-urban areas, which portrays a microcosm of South African society reflecting on race, class, labor, xenophobia, and geographic location. This work gives insight into the construction of migrant e-hailing drivers' positionsfung-ibility, precarity, and xenophobia. ARTICLE HISTORY
View
View
View
Researching Grey Zones: Pornography Research Between Pleasure and Harm
Chapter
  • Jan 2024
This paper discusses the advantages and challenges of analyzing sexual images visually. It lays out the design of and experiences from collecting data at two national hotlines, who receive anonymous reports by “digital bystanders”: people who in their everyday life come across problematic sexual images online. To achieve nuanced data on how people respond to sexual images online, this study took a mixed-methods visual approach. Through quantitative content analysis and qualitative reading of the images, the grey zones of age, consent, and authenticity could be analyzed visually. Despite the ethical issues inherent in working with such sensitive images, I argue that they are vital in understanding how Internet users interact with illegal, legal, and grey zone images online.
View
Introduction: Data Porn? Reflexivity in Visual Methods
Chapter
  • Dec 2024
Working with criminology means working with sensitive topics, and being a criminologist means getting used to that. Interviews and figures about crime become regular parts of everyday working life, and some criminologists will experience a sense of desensitization. Still, we have never failed to be affected by the visual dimension of criminological research.
View
Limited Evidence that the Gender Composition of Public Conflicts is Associated with Bystander Intervention: A Video-Observational Study
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2024
Research suggests that the gender composition of conflict parties influences how bystanders perceive violence, reflecting constructions of masculinity and femininity that promote women’s protection. Relying on CCTV footage of public conflicts in the Netherlands, we ran logistic regression models at the situational level ( N = 66 conflicts) and multilevel models at the individual level ( N = 1,954 bystanders) to examine the relationship between conflict parties’ gender composition and bystander intervention. Further, we tested whether perceived intimate ties between conflict parties were associated with intervention. Gender composition was not linked to intervention probability, but patterns in the data point towards less bystander intervention in intimate conflicts, though not statistically clear. Understanding contextual conflict variations is crucial for effective bystander intervention strategies.
View
Shoves, nudges and combating misinformation: evidence on a new approach
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2024
To what extent can the harms of misinformation be mitigated by relying on nudges? Prior research has demonstrated that non-intrusive ‘accuracy nudges’ can reduce the sharing of misinformation. We investigate an alternative approach. Rather than subtly reminding people about accuracy, our intervention, indebted to research on the bystander effect, explicitly appeals to individuals' capacity to help solve the misinformation challenge. Our results are mixed. On the one hand, our intervention reduces the willingness to share and believe in misinformation fact-checked as false. On the other hand, it also reduces participants' willingness to share information that has been fact-checked as true and innocuous, as well as non-fact-checked information. Experiment 1 offers proof of concept; Experiment 2 tests our intervention with a more realistic mix of true and false social media posts; Experiment 3 tests our interventions alongside an accuracy nudge. The effectiveness of our intervention at reducing willingness to share misinformation remains consistent across experiments; meta-analysis reveals that our treatment reduced willingness to share false content across experiments by 20% of a scale point on a six-point scale. We do not observe the accuracy nudge reducing willingness to share false content. Taken together, these results highlight the advantages and disadvantages of accuracy nudges and our more confrontational approach.
View
Empathy-Based Helping: Is It Selflessly or Selfishly Motivated?
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 1987
A substantial body of evidence collected by Batson and his associates has advanced the idea that pure (i.e., selfless) altruism occurs under conditions of empathy for a needy other. An egoistic alternative account of this evidence was proposed and tested in our work. We hypothesized that an observer's heightened empathy for a sufferer brings with it increased personal sadness in the observer and that it is the egoistic desire to relieve the sadness, rather than the selfless desire to relieve the sufferer, that motivates helping. Two experiments contrasted predictions from the selfless and egoistic alternatives in the paradigm typically used by Batson and his associates. In the first, an empathic orientation to a victim increased personal sadness, as expected. Furthermore, when sadness and empathic emotion were separated experimentally, helping was predicted by the levels of sadness subjects were experiencing but not by their empathy scores. In the second experiment, enhanced sadness was again associated with empathy for a victim. However, subjects who were led to perceive that their moods could not be altered through helping (because of the temporary action of a “mood-fixing” placebo drug) were not helpful, despite high levels of empathic emotion. The results were interpreted as providing support for an egoistically based interpretation of helping under conditions of high empathy.
View
Consolation in the aftermath of robberies resembles post-aggression consolation in chimpanzees
Article
Full-text available
Post-aggression consolation is assumed to occur in humans as well as in chimpanzees. While consolation following peer aggression has been observed in children, systematic evidence of consolation in human adults is rare. We used surveillance camera footage of the immediate aftermath of nonfatal robberies to observe the behaviors and characteristics of victims and bystanders. Consistent with empathy explanations, we found that consolation was linked to social closeness rather than physical closeness. While females were more likely to console than males, males and females were equally likely to be consoled. Furthermore, we show that high levels of threat during the robbery increased the likelihood of receiving consolation afterwards. These patterns resemble post-aggression consolation in chimpanzees and suggest that emotions of empathic concern are involved in consolation across humans and chimpanzees.
View
View
Capturing violence in the night-time economy: A review of established and emerging methodologies
Article
  • Feb 2019
  • AGGRESS VIOLENT BEH
Night-time economy (NTE) leisure zones, while providing local economic growth and positive social experiences, are hotspots for urban public violence. Research aimed at better understanding and thus reducing this violence has employed a range of empirical methods: official records, self-reports, experiments, and observational techniques. In this paper, we review the applications of these methodologies for analyzing NTE violence on key research dimensions, including mapping incidents across time and space; interpreting the motivations and meaning of violence; identifying social psychological background variables and health consequences; and the ability to examine mid-violent interactions. Further, we assess each method in terms of reliability, validity, and the potential for establishing causal claims. We demonstrate that there are fewer and less established methodologies available for examining the interactional dynamics of NTE violence. Using real-life NTE bystander intervention as a case example, we argue that video-based behavioral analysis is a promising method to address this gap. Given the infancy and relative lack of exposure of the video observational method, we provide recommendations for scholars interested in adopting this technique.
View
Video Data Analysis: A Methodological Frame for a Novel Research Trend
Article
  • May 2018
Since the early 2000s, the proliferation of cameras, whether in mobile phones or CCTV, led to a sharp increase in visual recordings of human behavior. This vast pool of data enables new approaches to analyzing situational dynamics. Application is both qualitative and quantitative and ranges widely in fields such as sociology, psychology, criminology, and education. Despite the potential and numerous applications of this approach, a consolidated methodological frame does not exist. This article draws on various fields of study to outline such a frame, what we call video data analysis (VDA). We discuss VDA’s research agenda, methodological forebears, and applications, introduce an analytic tool kit, and discuss criteria for validity. We aim to establish VDA as a methodological frame and an interdisciplinary analytic approach, thereby enhancing efficiency and comparability of studies, and communication among disciplines that employ VDA. This article can serve as a point of reference for current and future practitioners, reviewers, and interested readers.
View
The Nature of Peace: Behavioral Processes and Systems of Peace
Chapter
  • May 2018
This chapter starts with a brief overview of previous conceptualizations of peace. Next, the chapter presents the operational definitions of peace, aggression, and violence employed in peace ethology. The chapter then defines three social components of peace and introduces the peace ethology model of behavioral processes and systems of peace. The chapter closes with a brief discussion of how the contents of the chapters in this volume reflect specific components of the peace ethology model.
View
On the Actual Risk of Bystander Intervention: A Statistical Study Based on Naturally Occurring Violent Emergencies
Article
  • Feb 2018
  • J RES CRIME DELINQ
Objectives Bystander studies have rarely considered the victimization risk associated with intervention into violent, dangerous emergencies. To address this gap, we aim to identify factors that influence bystanders’ risk of being physically victimized. Method We observed bystander behavior from video surveillance footage of naturally occurring violence in nighttime economy settings, and data were analyzed with a logistic regression model. Results Data show that approximately one of the six interventions results in some type of victimization, typically with a relatively low degree of severity. The bystander’s social group membership, the setting of the emergency, and the bystander’s intervention type are estimated as risk factors for victimization. Conclusions Previous research suggests that a bystander’s social group membership with victims promotes intervention behavior. Our results expand the role of social group membership as being a factor that also influences whether the intervening bystander is victimized.
View
Lessons Learned from Crime Caught on Camera
Article
  • Jan 2018
  • J RES CRIME DELINQ
Objectives: The widespread use of camera surveillance in public places offers criminologists the opportunity to systematically and unobtrusively observe crime, their main subject matter. The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader of current developments in research on crimes caught on camera. Methods: We address the importance of direct observation of behavior and review criminological studies that used observational methods, with and without cameras, including the ones published in this issue. We also discuss the uses of camera recordings in other social sciences and in biology. Results: We formulate six key insights that emerge from the literature and make recommendations for future research. Conclusions: Camera recordings of real-life crime are likely to become part of the criminological tool kit that will help us better understand the situational and interactional elements of crime. Like any source, it has limitations that are best addressed by triangulation with other sources.
View
View
View