Presentation
Psychological Predictors of Threat Recognition and Bystander Intervention: A Warning Behavior Simulation
SessionWednesday Poster Session
DescriptionCampus safety depends on bystanders recognizing and reporting concerning behaviors before violence occurs. Yet the individual traits that determine whether someone notices a warning sign and acts remain poorly understood. This study used an agent-based simulation with 500 synthetic bystanders to examine how empathy, mental health stigma, social connectedness, and emotion regulation predict threat recognition and intervention willingness across six warning behavior scenarios drawn from the threat assessment literature.
Results revealed that all four bystander characteristics significantly influenced both perceived threat and willingness to intervene. Stigma emerged as the strongest barrier to intervention, while social connectedness and empathy were the strongest positive predictors among the psychosocial factors examined. Perceived threat explained additional variance in intervention willingness beyond social-emotional variables, suggesting that helping people accurately recognize warning signs may be as important as targeting individual traits. Warning behavior type also mattered, with leakage of intent eliciting the highest threat perception and social withdrawal eliciting the lowest.
These findings suggest that campus reporting systems should reduce stigma-related barriers, improve threat awareness training, and address ambiguous warning behaviors where bystander characteristics most strongly influence outcomes. A second phase will empirically validate these predictions with undergraduate participants.
Results revealed that all four bystander characteristics significantly influenced both perceived threat and willingness to intervene. Stigma emerged as the strongest barrier to intervention, while social connectedness and empathy were the strongest positive predictors among the psychosocial factors examined. Perceived threat explained additional variance in intervention willingness beyond social-emotional variables, suggesting that helping people accurately recognize warning signs may be as important as targeting individual traits. Warning behavior type also mattered, with leakage of intent eliciting the highest threat perception and social withdrawal eliciting the lowest.
These findings suggest that campus reporting systems should reduce stigma-related barriers, improve threat awareness training, and address ambiguous warning behaviors where bystander characteristics most strongly influence outcomes. A second phase will empirically validate these predictions with undergraduate participants.
Event Type
Poster
TimeWednesday, October 21st5:30pm - 6:30pm PDT
LocationSummit Pavilion