Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Publication Date

Spring 5-1-2024

Journal

Undergraduate Honours Theses

Abstract

While there is substantial literature concerning the traits of both perpetrators and victims of barroom sexual aggression (BSA), considerably less has been written about bystanders. This study aimed to examine the degree to which attitudes of male bystanders informs willingness to intervene in cases of BSA. 360 groups of 3-5 young men (in total 1269 participants; ages 17 - 26) coming from and going to a bar (‘bar hopping’) were recruited for the study. Participants completed measures on rape myth acceptance (RMA), misogyny, and willingness to intervene in hypothetical cases of BSA, either to stop an aggressive male friend, or to defend a female friend. It was hypothesized that participants with lower RMA and less misogyny would be more likely to intervene, both to stop a male aggressor or to defend a female victim. Linear regressions were conducted to test this hypothesis, examining the degree to which participants’ beliefs and their peer group’s beliefs contributed to intent to intervene. Across all models, individuals’ RMA and misogyny scores significantly predicted intention to intervene, while peer group beliefs were only significant in one of the four models (misogyny * female friend) model. In all cases, models accounted for only a small proportion of the variance (r2 range .011 - .055), thus it appears there are more significant contributing factors which were not examined in this study. Implications, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Notes

Thesis Advisor(s): Dr. Tara Dumas, Dr. Irene Cheung

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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Psychology Commons

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