The Bystander Effect

From one of the United States southeastern schools, a female student shared, "The girls are nice and they tell the boys to stop . . . like some of them are really strong and fast so they'll start chasing them and then I just start laughing my head off because the boys are running away from the girls"" (Thornberg 4). This represents how certain girls will assist other girls if a boy is threatening her. Moral evaluating is based on observing the conflict in terms of what is right and wrong. However, there is still bystander irresponsibility, where bystanders believe it is not their intention to intervene because it was not their "moral responsibility"". Some people ignore the problem, and pretend they are not listening, while others just stand and stare. Others blame the victim, and therefore do not help the victim out.
             Intervention self-efficacy is where bystanders analyze if they take action, how effective would it be. Typically, the adult is the one who believes that if they intervene, then they would effectively control the problem. High level of intervention would be the bystanders who believe highly of themselves to solve a conflict. For example, students would tell a counselor or an adult about a conflict because they are superior compared to the students. There is also low level, or lack of intervention, where bystanders are unable to intervene due to the fact that they are afraid that their future actions would not benefit the conflict. For reasons, bystanders want to take deed to resolving the problem, but don't want to hurt anyone. Bystanders do have their limitations, which tie into them having moral values. In January 2014, the Obama administration made an announcement in which students on school campus are sexually assaulted due to college parties. College parties are the main reason female students get raped. From 2005 to 2010, more than 60 percent of the sexual violence claims made to a leading insurer of colleges and universities “involved young women who were so drunk they had no clear memory of the assault.