Gender differences in bystanders’ intention to help towards female and male victims of domestic violence: a web-based online survey

The purpose of the current research is to explore the attitudes towards domestic violence victims by looking at empathy, sexism and personality traits and the willingness to help domestic violence male and female victims. The project’s aim was to answer 4 main questions: Whether females experience higher empathy than males? Whether females and males will feel more empathic concern towards same sex victims? Whether higher empathy scores will lead to stronger willingness to help domestic violence victim? Whether personality traits such as: extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism are going to affect the willingness to intervene and help the victims. To answer these questions we used 4 questionnaires, measuring empathy, sexism and personality traits associated with violence and altruistic behaviours. There were two tests, which were used to measure empathy: The Empathy Quotient and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. To measure sexism the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory was used. Lastly to measure neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism was the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Short Version. There were 18 images with descriptive text separated into 3 conditions: male victim; female victim and happy couple. The results showed that females tend to be more empathic than males in general, and while there was a positive correlation between empathic concern and helping both male and female victims across the male participants, females showed empathic concern only towards females. Additionally, participants with high empathy scores, showed tendencies for helping victims of domestic violence. Further research is needed with more realistic stimuli and testing brain regions related to empathy and decision making, while participants are exposed to the domestic violence images.