RT Article
T1 Reactive guardianship: Who intervenes? How? And why?
JF Criminology
VO 62
IS 3
SP 587
OP 618
A1 Barnum, Timothy C.
A2 Herman, Shaina
A2 Gelder, Jean-Louis van
A2 Ribeaud, Denis
A2 Eisner, Manuel 1959-
A2 Nagin, Daniel 1948-
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1914481135
AB Guardianship is a core tenet of routine activity theory and collective efficacy. At its outset, routine activity research assumed that the mere presence of a guardian was sufficient to disrupt many forms of crime. More recent research, however, has taken as a starting point that would-be-guardians must take on an active role for a reduction in crime to occur. Integrating research on bystander intervention and guardianship-in-action, the current study elaborates the individual-level motivations and decision processes of guardianship to answer the following questions: Who serves as a reactive guardian? How do they do so? And why? We tasked young adults (N = 1,032) included in the recent waves of the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso) to assess a 70-second video depicting a sexual harassment event. We examined participants’ willingness to engage in a range of intervention options as a function of their prosocial attitudes, safety considerations, socioemotional motivations, and moral considerations. Results show a complex decision process leading to whether and how a would-be guardian decides to intervene to disrupt sexual harassment, such that prosocial motivations and emotional reactions are weighed against perceptions of danger when deciding on a specific course of action.
K1 bystander intervention
K1 Decision-making
K1 perceived danger
K1 Prosociality
K1 reactive guardianship
DO 10.1111/1745-9125.12380