Transformative psychology #14: Changing default settings for bystander intervention

Bystander intervention is when you, as a witness, see a bully, a predator, an aggressor or an attacker target someone and you, as a decent human, intervene.

One of the hardest pieces of this is to convince yourself that you should, in fact, intervene on someone who is hostile, dominating, aggressive, threatening, and just plain scary. We may be culturally opposed to such intimidation or we may even be hard-wired to want to stand up for the vulnerable, but humans also seem wired to seek any justification for not being involved. 

I'm not strong enough. They will figure it out by themselves. Someone else will intervene and fix this.

Our ability to justify our impulse to "let George handle it" is impressive--and a straight-up abdication of our duty to the vulnerable as humans. 

Research helps us understand and prepare (Peck, Doumas & Midgett, 2024). Critically, "when individuals find they have acted in a way that contradicts their moral compass, they may activate 'disengagement' mechanisms to avoid the discomfort of negative self‐sanctions" (Gotdiner & Gumpel, 2024, p. 634). 

Thus, forgiving ourselves for shameful conduct in past bystander intervention fails is the first step toward learning how to gain agency and a stronger chance to be an effective intervenor in future situations where we observe an aggressor and a targeted person.

One of the strongest deterrents our minds wrestle with in the real-life moment of witnessing a bully attacking a targeted person is "perceived costs" (McCary[1], 2017). To accurately calculate these perceived costs is critical, and then to calculate the costs of not intervening, compare the two, and make a decision.

Tactics that reduce the perceived costs are thus vital to enable bystanders to intervene. 

One may imagine the bully refocusing on oneself instead of the original target. When that happens, are there tactics that can mitigate that possibility and thus reduce the perceived costs? 

Approaching the targeted person as a friend, or at the least a friendly other, can help the intervenor attenuate the tension without calling out the aggressor. 

Treating the interaction as something to dismiss rather than shout about can de-couple all parties' moral engagement, investment, and need to either assert dominance or survive by abject surrender. Not making eye contact with the aggressor can assist in not engendering an atmosphere of dominance calculation in the moment. Making eye contact instead with the targeted person can evoke a measure of trust in many situations. Smiling or even laughing "with" the targeted person can relieve some tensions in some cases and thus psychologically deëscalate all parties. Affecting non-dominating but reframing behaviors can often significantly reduce risks to all parties. Asking questions rather than making statements cedes one form of power in order to enhance another form of power.

Reframing reality is altering it and creating a new reality.

Are these guaranteed strategies?

There is no such thing.

References

Gotdiner, V., & Gumpel, T. P. (2024). Bystander intervention style and motivational factors influencing behavior in bullying situations. Psychology in the Schools, 61(2), 631–646. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1002/pits.23075

McCary, Jennifer (2017). Teaching bystanders to intervene. TedxGettysburg College. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iY_X4O-wno

Peck, M., Doumas, D. M., & Midgett, A. (2024). Examination of the Bystander Intervention Model Among Middle School Students: A Preliminary Study. Professional Counselor, 14(2), 119–134. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.15241/mp.14.2.119

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iY_X4O-wno

Transformative psychology #13: Internal conflict resolution under duress

While the field of conflict transformation is generally concerned with conflict management methods between and among parties to a conflict, in recent years neuroscience research is studying how we manage our inner conflicts--a melding of neuroscience and psychology relative to conflict response. 

Brain scientists have been helping us understand the aspects of how we humans are hard-wired--or not--to respond to threats, but most interestingly, how we can manipulate or even rewire that hard wiring. In a recent study, for instance, researchers tested responses to presenting problems using situations that were resolved by normal methods and comparing those to test participants who faced atypical conflict scenarios--could they successfully flex and adapt? (Sauter, et al., 2024)

References

Sauter, A. E., Zabicki, A., Schüller, T., Baldermann, J. C., Fink, G. R., Mengotti, P., & Vossel, S. (2024). Response and conflict expectations shape motor responses interactively. Experimental Brain Research, 242(11), 2599–2612. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1007/s00221-024-06920-w

Transformative psychology #12: Neuroscience of consensus, or what part of the brain produces groupthink?

In 2011, a Stanford psychologist discovered a function of the:

"ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain's reward centre that lights up when we encounter things we want, like a chocolate bar. Zaki's team found that it also activates when people are told what others think. And the more this part of the brain responds to information about group opinion, the more someone will adjust their opinion towards the consensus" (Rutkin, 2025, p. 32).

Some wrote about this decades ago when analyzing the process of the "best and brightest" American officials in John F. Kennedy's cabinet, who all came to agree to invade Cuba's Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro, an invasion that was so poorly thought out that it ended in abject humiliation for the US. 

Achieving real consensus is more than a powerful and persuasive person convincing a group to get along by going along. Part of the successful application of psychology toward genuine consensus is credible humility by the figure usually regarded as the decider--the owner of a company, the founder of a group, the most credentialed member of a group, the person who is looked to for wise decisions by others, or even simply a dominant personality. 

Checking ego, checking any ability to pull rank, checking any potential for retribution, checking one's high position in a hierarchy--all this is requisite to authentic consensus process, a process that, when done well, produces wise decisions and high commitment to results by those who were participants in that process (Dressler, 2006).

References

Dressler, Larry (2006). Consensus through conversation: How to achieve high-commitment decisions. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Rutkin, A. (2015). We Are Wired to Conform. New Scientist, 227(3034), 32.

Transformative psychology #11: Unfreezing conflict narratives

In current research on attempting to alter, abolish, or transform the conventional conflict-supporting narratives that enable nations to continue destructive conflict, an Israeli team of psychologists and conflict resolution researchers are finding some promise in what they refer to as Information Process Model (IPM).  

These interdisciplinary researchers describe their work in unpacking formulation and interruption of conflict-supporting narratives using this intervention method:

Specifically, an IPM-based intervention includes the following four elements: (1) clarifying that conflict-supporting narratives evolve to fulfill the needs of society members involved in intractable conflicts; (2) explaining that these narratives are common among all societies involved in such conflicts; (3) adding that these narratives come with a cost of fueling the conflict and describing the immense costs to society that come with it; and (4) suggesting that there is a benefit to exploring alternative means of fulfilling these needs, as found in other peacefully-resolved conflicts, which may end the cycle of violence and proceed to peacemaking. (Rosler, Wiener-Blotner, Heskiau & Sharvit, 2024, p. 1151).

Selecting other conflict narratives that did transform and seeking components that can be shown as paradigms worth possibly adapting to the protracted conflict experienced by members of the nation involved can lower barriers to acceptance of methods that may hold a promise in lowering the tremendous costs of destructive conflict.

References

Rosler, N., Wiener-Blotner, O., Heskiau Micheles, O., & Sharvit, K. (2024). Understanding Reactions to Informative Process Model Interventions: Ambivalence as a Mechanism of Change. Behavioral Sciences (2076-328X), 14(12), 1152. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.3390/bs14121152

Transformative psychology #10: Nonviolent Communication, cultural differences, post-traumatic stress

In one study of the efficacy of a three-part use of Nonviolent Communication,[1] using the Nonviolent Communication Behavior Scale, researchers found that self-connection, authentic self-expression, and empathic listening were useful in reducing cross-cultural miscommunications and in dampening communication difficulties with people suffering PTS (Fung, et al., 2025).

In principled negotiation, the care for others and care for self is balanced, which tends to move agreements away from mere compromise and toward collaboration. When the three elements of Nonviolent Communication are utilized in principled negotiation, the new possibilities of progress toward a win-win outcome are enhanced. 

Self-connection is the honest inner exploration of needs. Authentic self-expression is the honest communication of those needs. Empathic listening is eliciting the needs of others with a dual lens of openness to cultural differences and tolerance for PTS.

Application of Nonviolent Communication competencies tends to open minds and hearts more than any communication method that is simply oriented toward self-aggrandizement or control over the discourse.

References

Fung, H. W., Chau, A. K. C., Yuan, G. F., Liu, C., & Lam, S. K. K. (2025). The Nonviolent Communication Behaviors Scale: Cross-Cultural Validity and Association with Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress. Research on Social Work Practice, 35(1), 88–96. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1177/10497315231221969

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[1] Nonviolent Communication is capitalized as it refers to a method of communication developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg. It is a specific practice method, not merely communication that doesn't happen to be violent, which would logically perhaps be called nonviolent communication.

Transformative psychology #9: Choose your metaphors wisely

Scholars in both Communications and Conflict Transformation have researched the psychology of metaphor choice as we work on our identities, our problems, our relationships, our sense of morality, and much more, including, it is hoped, effective solutionary paths.

Interviewing Restorative Justice (RJ) practitioners and analyzing the results led Communications researchers Ian Borton and Gregory Paul (2015) to posit that the common metaphor of regarding the RJ, healing, might be far more problematic than a less fraught metaphor of gardening. 

Underneath this work is the vast cultural differences and injured parties' logical struggles with the idea of a perpetrator being part of healing the injuries. But tending to a garden is a more modest and less loaded metaphor, still with positive imagery and associations. 

When the Jesuit priest, literati, and nonviolent resister Dan Berrigan explained the process by which he developed and presented the metaphor for their bold act of direct action interference with the draft sending young Americans to kill or die in Vietnam, he told us, "It took me all winter, after our initial attempt in October 1967, to say 'Fire.' Then we made homemade napalm, which was killing and maiming so many civilians in Vietnam, and burned the draft files in the parking lot." That metaphor, reified in the blaze of draft files, caught metaphorical fire and it literally and figuratively sparked a series of what became known as draft board raids, more than three dozen of them, across the US, grinding at least some of the Selective Service system to a halt and lighting up the public consciousness.

The right metaphor, rooted in the right psychological approach, can alter reality. 

References

Borton, I. M., & Paul, G. D. (2015). Problematizing the healing metaphor of restorative justice. Contemporary Justice Review, 18(3), 257–273. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/10282580.2015.1057704

Transformative psychology #8: Cassandra complex and women who warn us

Cassandra made a deal with Apollo, it is written, that he would grant her the gift of prophesy if she would have sex with him. He gave her the gift, then she decided she really didn't want to lie with him, so he kissed her and cursed her to be unbelieved. For the rest of her short life, she warned her fellow Trojans of impending catastrophes, and all her dire predictions were both ignored and then came tragically true.

Psychologists have written about the "Cassandra complex" for many decades, with varying interpretations (Azriel, 2023). Those who observe public policy debates have seen women give serious warnings and been dismissed as "hysterical" or emotional all too often. Is this a simple psychological problem inherent in patriarchy or can it in turn produce actual psychological problems for the "Cassandras" who offer terrible predictions and are dismissed--even when they have been correct in the past?

References

Azriel, N. (2023). Rethinking the Cassandra Complex: Toward Collective Reclamation of the Capacity to Listen. Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, 17(3), 25–38. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/10.1080/19342039.2023.2224710