The University At Buffalo School of Management

Witnesses to anti-social behavior must speak up to support the lone voices of people who confront it to reduce the risk of such behavior becoming tolerated in society, according to new research. Three studies into the impact of bystander conduct showed that when bystanders step in to support someone who is calling out mistreatment or harmful behavior it sends a strong message to onlookers that this behavior is unacceptable, helping to prevent a gradual erosion of social norms. Witnesses to anti-social behaviour must speak up to support the lone voices of people who confront it to reduce the risk of such behaviour becoming tolerated in society, according to research from the Universities of Bath, Groningen and Western Australia. Three studies into the impact of bystander conduct showed that when bystanders step in to support someone who is calling out mistreatment or harmful behaviour it sends a strong message to onlookers that this behaviour is unacceptable, helping to prevent a gradual erosion of social norms. Conversely, staying silent, or changing the subject to avoid awkwardness, can be interpreted by others as a lack of agreement and undermines the efforts of the confronter. The research shows bystander actions are pivotal in helping or hindering efforts to address anti-social behaviour. "If something anti-social happens we look to someone to step in and say something," says lead researcher Anna Tirion. "It's tempting to think 'someone else has got this' and we don't need to get involved, but what we've been ignoring is that the initial confrontation is not the end of the interaction. If other bystanders stay out of it, it's not without consequences. "If no one says anything to support the confrontation, people start to think the norm wasn't that strong. It chips away at pro-social norms that protect being kind and helpful to others, and not causing harm. Over time people start to think a particular (antisocial) behaviour doesn't matter," said Tirion. The researchers hope that the findings will make a positive contribution to bystander training. They hope that future studies will also look at the role of bystanders in whistleblowing scenarios and other contexts, such as when the people involved are all strangers. The research was conducted during Tirion's undergraduate psychology studies at Bath, on a placement year at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The studies investigated the effect of bystander responses to social confrontation in the context of Covid-19 social distancing rules, which were in place in most European countries in 2020-2021. Participants were shown various scenarios where someone confronted a social distancing rule-breaker (admitting to hosting/ attending parties during lockdown) to investigate the effect of different bystander reactions (support, silence, or changing the subject) on how strong participants found the norm of following the rules. The researchers also measured to what extent the participants thought the bystanders agreed with the confronter based on their reaction. When the confronter was left without support, participants concluded that the bystanders did not strongly agree, leading them to think the norm to socially distance was weak. Despite the specific Covid context the researchers say that understanding the mechanisms of this behaviour makes it widely applicable to social confrontations in the workplace, on public transport, and in society at large. "How bystanders can lend their support depends a bit on the situation," said Tirion. "If your face is visible to everyone, like on the Zoom call we simulated in one of our studies, simply nodding might be enough to send that supportive signal. Otherwise, a verbal expression of support like 'Yeah, you're/they're right' should do it. "If you're physically some distance away from the confrontation, you might want to go stand next to the confronter before you say something so your whole body language expresses that support -- if you feel safe to do so." Co-author Dr Annayah Prosser, from the University of Bath's School of Management, said: "There is a personal cost for people to go against the norm, to cause tension and friction. Even if people find someone's behaviour unacceptable there is a social norm against speaking up. Causing friction is uncomfortable and this can hold people back." People may also be reluctant to step in for fear of overkill, but the researchers say this is far from the current reality. "People's intuitive response can be that it will be a 'pile-on' but this is not a problem currently," said Dr Prosser. "People are taking a lot of social risk to intervene and going unsupported. We need to make sure intervention against anti-social behaviour is supported by bystanders, and not just met with silence."

Optimistic thinking has long been immortalized in self-help books as the key to happiness, good health and longevity but it can also lead to poor decision making,  with particularly serious implications for people's financial wellbeing. Optimistic thinking has long been immortalized in self-help books as the key to happiness, good health and longevity but it can also lead to poor decision making, with particularly serious implications for people's financial wellbeing. Research from the University of Bath shows that excessive optimism is actually associated with lower cognitive skills such as verbal fluency, fluid reasoning, numerical reasoning, and memory. Whereas those high on cognitive ability tend to be both more realistic and pessimistic in their expectations about the future. "Forecasting the future with accuracy is difficult and for that reason we night expect those with low cognitive ability to make more errors in judgments, both pessimistic and optimistic. But the results are clear: low cognitive ability leads to more self-flattering biases -- people essentially deluding themselves to a degree." said Dr Chris Dawson of the University's School of Management. "This points to the idea that whilst humans may be primed by evolution to expect the best, those high on cognitive ability are more able to override this automatic response when it comes to important decisions. Plans based on overly optimistic beliefs make for poor decisions and are bound to deliver worse outcomes than would realistic beliefs," Dr Dawson added. Decisions on major financial issues such as employment, investments or savings, and any choice involving risk and uncertainty, were particularly prone to this effect and posed serious implications for individuals. "Unrealistically optimistic financial expectations can lead to excessive levels of consumption and debt, as well as insufficient savings. It can also lead to excessive business entries and subsequent failures. The chances of starting a successful business are tiny, but optimists always think they have a shot and will start businesses destined to fail," Dr Dawson said. The study -- "Looking on the (B)right Side of Life: Cognitive Ability and Miscalibrated Financial Expectations" -- took data from a UK survey of over 36,000 households and looked at people's expectations of their financial wellbeing and compared them with their actual financial outcomes. The research found that those highest on cognitive ability experienced a 22% increase in the probability of "realism" and a 35 per cent decrease in the probability of "extreme optimism." "The problem with our being programmed to think positively is that it can adversely affect our quality of decision making, particularly when we have to make serious decisions. We need to be able to over-ride that and this research shows that people with high cognitive ability manage this better than those with low cognitive ability," he said. "Unrealistic optimism is one of the most pervasive human traits and research has shown people consistently underestimate the negative and accentuate the positive. The concept of 'positive thinking' is almost unquestioningly embedded in our culture -- and it would be healthy to revisit that belief," Dr Dawson added

Focus groups that feed views, experiences and opinions into politics, business and research might yield more open interaction and discussion within groups by moving moderators to a separate room, shows new research. Focus groups that feed views, experiences and opinions into politics, business and research might yield more open interaction and discussion within groups by moving moderators to a separate room, shows new research. The study developed and tested a novel 'remotely-moderated' focus group method where questions are posed on a screen, and moved along by a moderator watching the group from a different room. Dr Annayah Prosser from the University of Bath's School of Management said: "Without the moderator, the participants seemed particularly willing to go beyond their usual role of answering questions and took over the question-asking role. Group members also extended the reach of questions in interesting ways in situations where discussion stalled. "We found that the groups talked about things we really didn't expect them to, and that we hadn't considered before as a research team. This methodology takes the potential biases of a moderator- quite literally- out of the room and helps us focus on what the group really thinks about an issue." The moderator has long been considered fundamental to the effectiveness of focus groups, probing answers and facilitating discussions, but, equally, researchers question whether they might hamper group interaction or inhibit group dialogue in some contexts. The researchers say a remotely-moderated focus group can help overcome some of the problems a physically present moderator might create, while still incorporating many of the benefits moderation brings. "When we first came up with the idea of trying to run focus groups in this way, we had a number of potential concerns," said Dr Tim Kurz from the University of Western Australia's School of Psychological Science, who was a senior collaborator on the study. "Would people actually talk? Would they stay 'on topic'? Would the participants feel comfortable with the situation? "However, we were blown away by not only how smoothly the conversations flowed but also how useful the kinds of qualitative data being produced were for exploring all sorts of potentially interesting and important research questions. It turns out that, sometimes, the best thing that you can do as a qualitative researcher is to just get out of the way and let participants talk amongst themselves!" The team say many of the attributes that make a moderator a successful discussion manager are already familiar to people in the social rules and cues that lead to meaningful group conversations in our everyday lives: ensuring that everyone has a chance to speak, that everyone is respected and that no one person dominates. "We were concerned that participants might mostly agree with each other to alleviate any social awkwardness or tension in the group," said Prosser. "In fact we found that without a moderator present there was still some conflict in opinion throughout the groups, which then necessitated management by the participants themselves, rather than 'through' a moderator. It gives us access to a rather novel and rich form of 'fly on the wall' data for understanding how disagreements work, group boundaries and motivations and how people interact." The study, published in Qualitative Research in Psychology set up two remotely-moderated focus group designs. The first exploring dietary identity between groups of vegans, vegetarians and flexitarians, and a second context exploring gendered experiences of sexual harassment. Over the course of the focus groups, participants were presented (remotely) with a number of questions via a screen presentation. The researcher aimed to provide about five minutes of discussion time for each question but had the flexibility to advance the slides sooner or later depending on the flow of the discussion. Small silences were ignored by the researchers, as they found that some silences led to subsequent interesting discussion. However, the slide was advanced for longer periods of awkward silence (over 60 seconds) to ensure group rapport did not suffer. The study team recommend that researchers hoping to use this method are mindful of the types of conflict that may occur within groups, and make plans for how to intervene in the event of discriminatory or hateful speech and actions. They add that the methodology might not always be suitable for topics of research where participants are more vulnerable. Offering participants a discreet way to alert the moderator to their discomfort- for example by giving them remote buttons they can use to 'bring the researcher in' if need be- may be effective.