Guardians are a potential resource of conflict de-escalation but we still know little about their actual behaviour. In this article we investigate whom among the antagonists a guardian selects as a target when they intervene in an interpersonal conflict. We investigate this using CCTV footage from Amsterdam (the Netherlands) of 46 interpersonal conflicts in public spaces involving 641 interventions by 176 individuals. We find that guardians are more likely to target antagonists: (1) who have performed the most aggressive behaviours, (2) who are not simultaneously targeted by other guardians, (3) who are from their own social group, (4) who are men. The analysis shows that the behaviour of intervening guardians is shaped by multiple aspects of the complex and often ambiguous conflict situations.

监护人是冲突升级的潜在资源，但我们对其实际行为仍然知之甚少。在本文中，我们研究了监护人在人际冲突中进行干预时选择谁作为目标。我们使用来自阿姆斯特丹（荷兰）的CCTV录像调查了这一事件，该录像涉及46个公共场所的人际冲突，涉及176人的641次干预。我们发现监护人更有可能针对对手：（1）表现出最激进的行为；（2）并非同时被其他监护人作为目标；（3）来自其自己的社交团体；（4）男人们 分析表明，干预监护人的行为是由复杂且通常模棱两可的冲突局势的多个方面决定的。