This research examines why bystanders often fail to intervene during sexual assaults. Drawing on belief in a just world theory, it investigates victim blaming, trivialisation, and psychological distancing. Using immersive staged films, the project aims to identify barriers to intervention and develop evidence-based campaigns encouraging bystanders to act more decisively.

This dissertation examines whether describing crowd disasters as “stampedes” affects how people assign blame. The talk argues that the term wrongly implies irrational, selfish victim behaviour, obscuring structural failures in planning and crowd management. Experiments will test whether language shifts blame from systems to victims in perceptions of crowd crushes.