From left to right, psychology students Kathinka Enderle and Olivia Sapinsky from the private university UMIT TIROL explored how bystanders react when women disclose that they have experienced domestic violence.
A not yet peer-reviewed study by Kathinka Enderle, Olivia Sapinsky and Can Gürer.
What an Experimental Study Reveals About Bystander Responses to Intimate Partner Violence
Intimate partner violence rarely unfolds in complete silence. It often becomes perceptible through conversations, sounds, or fragments of everyday interaction that are overheard by others. Yet even when violence is indirectly witnessed, bystander responses remain strikingly limited. A recent experimental not yet peer reviewed study conducted at UMIT TIROL (Private University for Health Sciences and Health Technology in Hall in Tirol, Austria) provides empirical insight into this phenomenon, demonstrating how consistently people refrain from acting, even when situational conditions would allow it. Rather than focusing on victims’ help-seeking behavior, the study examined bystander reactions to an overheard conversation in which intimate partner violence against a woman was described. The findings suggest that silence in such contexts is not accidental, but structural.
Investigating Bystander Behavior in a Controlled Setting
The study was designed as a laboratory experiment involving 80 participants. Under a cover story unrelated to violence, participants were exposed to a staged conversation between two experimenters, during which one speaker described a conflict with her male partner that had escalated into physical violence. Importantly, participants were not addressed directly and were not positioned as recipients of a disclosure. Instead, they were passive witnesses to an interpersonal exchange, mirroring situations in which violence is overheard rather than explicitly reported. The experimental manipulation concerned the linguistic framing of the violence. In one condition, the account was presented in a non-justifying, factual manner. In the other, the same violent act was described alongside self-blame and mitigating explanations that portrayed the partner’s behavior as understandable. The severity of the violence itself remained constant across conditions. In the overheard conversation, the experimenter described an ongoing pattern of conflict within her partner, emphasizing that the argument was not an isolated incident. She referred to established relationship “rules,” including restrictions on interacting with other men, which had been violated and triggered the conflict. The dispute was described as escalating, culminating in a physical act in which she was pushed against a table and fell. The speaker further mentioned visible physical consequences of the incident, specifically a bruise on her rib. She expressed uncertainty about how the relationship would continue and concern about what might happen if such an incident were to occur again. After the conversation, participants were left alone with the experimenter who had described the violence, for a two-minute interval—an intentionally unstructured phase designed to create a realistic opportunity for intervention.
“The situation was constructed to be low-threshold,” Kathinka Enderle explains. “No one was expected to intervene dramatically. Even a brief question or expression of concern would have counted as a response.”
A Uniform Behavioral Outcome: No Intervention
Across all experimental conditions, participant genders, and levels of gender role orientation, the behavioral outcome was identical: no participant intervened. There were no verbal reactions, no supportive gestures, and no attempts to address the situation. From a statistical perspective, this lack of variance eliminated the possibility of inferential analysis. From a psychological perspective, it became the study’s most consequential finding.
“We did not anticipate a complete absence of reactions,” Olivia Sapinsky says. “The fact that all participants remained silent points to a particularly strong form of the bystander effect.”
The results align with classic social psychological mechanisms such as diffusion of responsibility, situational ambiguity, and pluralistic ignorance, but extend them by demonstrating their potency even when a clear opportunity for action is present.
Emotional Processing Without Behavioral Expression
Post-experimental interviews showed that participants’ silence was not simply a sign of emotional detachment. Although around half of the participants said they had not noticed the conversation or had only partially paid attention, this stood in contrast to observed nonverbal reactions during the violence description and emotional discomfort after debriefing. Saying they had not noticed the conversation may therefore reflect a way of explaining or justifying non-intervention, rather than a complete lack of awareness. Participants may have downplayed their attention in order to reduce discomfort or avoid moral responsibility. However, because only participants’ verbal responses from the semi-structured interviews were included in the data analysis, while behavioral observations were not systematically analyzed, this interpretation remains tentative. A small number of participants additionally reported having questioned whether the conversation might have been staged. Such doubts, however, did not lead any participant to seek for clarification about the authenticity of the report. Importantly, even under conditions of doubt, low-threshold responses—such as asking whether the situation was real or expressing concern—would have been possible. The absence of such responses suggests that uncertainty did not merely reflect a lack of clarity, but functioned as an additional barrier to action. Overall, the findings suggest that the situation was often processed on an emotional level, even when this was not openly acknowledged, highlighting that silence can result from uncertainty and social norms rather than indifference.
The Role of Social Norms and Contextual Uncertainty
When asked to explain their non-response in an interview, participants most commonly referred to uncertainty: uncertainty about the seriousness of the situation and about the social appropriateness of intervening. Some described a tension between concern and restraint, shaped by the belief that intimate partner violence constitutes a private matter.
“This hesitation is socially learned,” Sapinsky explains. “It reflects norms about boundaries, authority, and non-interference rather than a lack of empathy.”
The findings suggest that silence functions as a socially regulated response, reinforced by fears of misinterpretation, embarrassment, or social sanction.
Silence as an Active Social Response
The study challenges the notion that non-intervention signals lack of awareness. Instead, it conceptualizes silence as a form of social action, a decision shaped by contextual cues and normative expectations.
“Not reacting may feel neutral,” Enderle says, “but in situations involving violence, it is still a meaningful choice.”
By documenting how consistently participants refrained from even minimal engagement, the study underscores the high psychological threshold that separates internal recognition from external response.
Implications for Bystander Intervention
The findings carry important implications for prevention and education. Awareness alone is insufficient. Even emotionally engaged individuals may remain silent if they lack socially legitimate scripts for action. Effective bystander interventions must therefore focus not only on recognizing violence, but on normalizing small, permissible responses—simple questions, expressions of concern, or offers of support that do not require authority or expertise.
“Responsibility does not mean solving the problem,” Gürer emphasizes. “It means refusing to treat violence as something that must go unanswered.”
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