Bystanders Intervene During Bar Fights Depending on Level of Aggression

We've all seen it happen. Guy walks into a bar and the bartender looks up and says... Wait, never mind. That's the beginning of a joke.

But seriously. Guy walks into a bar and after a few drinks, a fight starts. Well, a new study shows that people are more likely to try to break up that fight or a bar fight when they believe the conflict is too violent or has the potential to become more violent.

In fact, the study shows that bystanders break up about a third of fights that occur in bars and are most likely to intervene in conflicts between males.

According to lead study author Michael Parks, these bystanders used nonaggressive interventions to break up approximately 65 percent of the fights between two aggressive males in a bar setting. And the study found that most of the interventions were nonviolent-including separating the fighters or asking them to stop.

"Male-to-male aggression between two actors is usually considered by third parties to be the most severe, the type of incident that can lead to severe violence," Parks said, according to a press release.

The information from this study shows that despite the abhorrence that most people have for violence between men and women, bystanders are most likely to intervene depending on the level of violence demonstrated.

"It seems a little upsetting that people didn't intervene in incidents that involved a man harassing a women, but the results showed that this was indeed the case," Parks said, via the release. "Our data showed that this type of violence had the lowest level of severity, so one explanation for the lack of intervention in these incidents is that third parties perceived that the events won't escalate into higher levels of violence, something that does not have the potential to be dangerous or an emergency."

What do you think? 

More information regarding the study can be found in the journal of Aggressive Behavior.