Agressie in het openbaar vervoer, grijp jij in? Een onderzoek naar de invloeden van een hulpvraag en gepercipieerde status op het moment en de manier van ingrijpen van omstanders die een conflict waarnemen in het openbaar vervoer.

This report contains the results of the research performed on the role of bystanders at incidents between public workers and passengers in the public transportation system in the Netherlands. Specifically, reactions of bystanders are studied when conflicts between public workers and passengers escalate from verbal to physical. Simultaneously, different methods of conflict intervention – doing nothing, verbal intervention, physical intervention or calling the police– are being studied. With this, close attention is being paid to the response time of and type of intervening by the bystanders when public workers ask for their help. Finally, the status of the public worker, as perceived by the bystanders, is being weighed off against the response time and type of intervention of those bystanders. Respondents have been divided into three conditions (control – verbal – physical). All respondents were shown three fragments containing conflicts between public workers and passengers in the Dutch public transportation system that contained both verbal and physical conflicts. Depending on the condition, the length of the fragments shown to the respondents varied: In the control condition, respondents were shown fragments that ended after the conflict was introduced; In the verbal condition, respondents were shown fragments that ended on the moment the conflict would escalate verbally; And in the physical condition, respondents were shown the entire fragments including the verbal and physical conflict. The results were derived from the answers of the respondents on a fixed set of questions that were posed to them after seeing the various fragments. These results show that bystanders are more inclined to intervene in conflicts when they are escalating; whereas the type of intervention is positively related to the degree of conflict escalation. Moreover, the results show that bystanders will intervene faster and more seriously after a public worker asks for their assistance. Finally, the perceived status of the public worker will have an effect on the response time and type of intervention of bystanders; by which a high perceived status of the public worker will cause bystanders to intervene less quickly and intense. The findings are in correlation with the existing literature and indicate that bystanders enter at a late stadium of conflict intervention at conflicts between public workers and passengers in the Dutch public transportation system.