Browsing by Author "McConnell, Ceilidh"

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    Understanding Men's Responses to Sexual Violence: An Exploration of the Role of Empathy & Moral Disengagement
    (2023-09-14) McConnell, Ceilidh; Exner-Cortens, Deinera; Jenney, Angelique; Szeto, Andrew
    Sexual violence (SV) in the post-secondary setting in Canada is an ongoing concern with the potential for long-lasting negative mental health outcomes. Therefore, institutions across the country have implemented prevention strategies, many of which include the use of bystander intervention programming. The goal of bystander intervention programming is to provide participants with the skills and education necessary to engage in behaviours that stop and/or prevent SV in the post-secondary setting. But, bystander intervention programming has shown limited success in eliciting intervening behaviour among men specifically. Therefore, there is need to explore novel factors that could be impacting bystander intervention among men in this context to inform improvements to future programming. The present study explored how empathy and moral disengagement might be associated with bystander behaviour, bystander intentions, and bystander self-efficacy among a sample of 205 undergraduate men at a Western Canadian university. The results of this study indicate that empathetic concern component of empathy was positively related to bystander behaviour, bystander intentions, and bystander self-efficacy while moral disengagement was negatively related to bystander intentions and bystander self-efficacy. Further, the empathetic concern component of empathy acted as a protective factor on the negative association between high moral disengagement and bystander intervention behaviours in this sample. These results suggest that future research on bystander intervention program modifications should prioritize understanding how to promote empathetic concern among undergraduate men witnessing SV in the post-secondary setting.