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 (Reference Latané and Darley1970) 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, Reference Lonsway, Cortina and Magley2008). One of the most common 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, Reference Lerner1980; Lonsway & Fitzgerald, Reference Lonsway and Fitzgerald1994). 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 numbers of cases are widely publicized through the media, leading people to overestimate the rate of false accusations (Lonsway, Archambault, & Lisak, Reference Lonsway, Archambault and Lisak2009; Lonsway & Fitzgerald, Reference Lonsway and Fitzgerald1994).

Those negative attitudes and beliefs against victims can function as the barriers to bystander behaviors that were proposed by Latané and Darley (Reference Latané and Darley1970). 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, Reference Lerner1965). 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, Reference Sakalli-Uğurlu, Yalçin and Glick2007) and decrease bystanders’ willingness to intervene in situations (Bannon, Brosi, & Foubert, Reference Bannon, Brosi and Foubert2013; Burns, Reference Burn2009). Considering the negative impacts caused by SH myths, 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, Reference Batson, Turk, Shaw and Klein1995). Deitz, Blackwell, Daley, and Bentley (Reference Deitz, Blackwell, Daley and Bentley1982) and Sakalli-Uğurlu et al. (Reference Sakalli-Uğurlu, Yalçin and Glick2007) found that participants who were higher in empathy expressed more positive feelings toward rape victims and negative feelings toward harassers. These positive and negative feelings are expected to influence a bystander’s attribution 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 increase empathy. Perspective taking refers to the cognitive ability to consider situations from the viewpoint, feelings, and reactions of others (Dovidio, Gartner, & Validzic, Reference Dovidio, Gaertner and Validzic1998). 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, Reference Galinsky, Ku and Wang2005). 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, Reference Egan1990) and wanting to offer helping behaviors to the targets (Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, Reference Batson, Chang, Orr and Rowland2002). 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, Reference Bowes-Sperry and O’Leary-Kelly2005). 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 (Reference Ryan and Wessel2012) 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 (Reference Bowes-Sperry and O’Leary-Kelly2005) 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, Reference McDonald, Charlesworth and Graham2015).

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, Reference Yagil, Karnieli-Miller, Eisikovits and Enosh2006). 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 bystander’s high-involvement intervention, a training should focus on increasing the perceived benefits 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, Reference Bowes-Sperry and O’Leary-Kelly2005).