When are heterosexual men passive or compassionate towards gay victims of hate crime? Integrating the bystander and social loafing explanations

Compassionate feelings for people who are victimised because of their perceived sexual deviance (e.g., gay men) may be incompatible with support for heterosexual norms among heterosexual men. But, passivity (even indifference) towards such victims could raise concern over heterosexual men’s gay-tolerance attitude. Two classic social psychological theories offer competing explanations on when heterosexual men might be passive or compassionate towards gay victims of hate crime. The bystander model proposes passivity towards victims in an emergency situation if other bystanders are similarly passive, but compassionate reactions if bystanders are responsive to the victims. Conversely, the social loafing model proposes compassionate reactions towards victims when bystanders are passive, but passivity when other bystanders are already responsive toward the victims’ predicament. We tested and found supportive evidence for both models across two experiments (Ntotal = 501) in which passivity and compassionate reactions to gay victims of a purported hate crime were recorded after heterosexual men’s concern for social evaluation was either accentuated or relaxed. We found that the bystander explanation was visible only when the potential for social evaluation was strong, while the social loafing account occurred only when the potential for social evaluation was relaxed. Hence, we unite both models by showing that the bystander explanation prevails in situations where cues to social evaluation is strong, whereas the social loafing effect operates when concern over social judgement is somewhat relaxed.