The High Bystander Helping Rate for Public Assaults Does Not Generalize to Commercial Robberies: A Video Observational Study

The largest systematic study of bystander intervention in real-life public assaults,(Philpot et al., 2020), revealed that victims of aggression receive help from bystanders in 90.9% of assaults. Using the same measurement instrument and similar kinds of video data, we examine the generalizability of this study in another dangerous violent emergency con-text involving fewer bystanders and more weapons: commercial robberies. We analyzed 43 CCTV-observed robbery incidents in commercial settings and found that bystanders took action to help the victim in 35.0% of the events, a frequency substantially lower than in pub-lic assaults. While the number of bystanders present was positively associated with bystander helping behavior in public assaults, this was not the case in the context of commercial rob-beries. Our findings suggest that researchers should be wary of generalizing bystander inter-vention rates across emergency types. We discuss theoretical implications of these findings and advocate further research examining the likelihood of bystander helping across natural-istic settings and diverse emergency and violence types.