TORONTO — Barroom brawls and pub fights are often depicted in movies as free-for-alls with willing participants, but new research aims to dissect the experience and finds a distinct difference between perpetrators and victims.

"Often we use the terminology, 'Oh, boys will be boys,' and 'Let them have it out,"' said Samantha Wells, a scientist for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

"But I think that these findings suggest that maybe we need to pay more attention to what's happening in the barroom and that we need programs to prevent aggression in bars."

She said society sometimes accepts aggression as normal, but maybe it isn't normal and there are real victims.

Her research will be published in the April issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Male college and university students in a southwestern Ontario city were asked about their bar experiences, as well as questions to determine scores on tests measuring hypermasculinity and trait aggression. Altogether, 675 young men aged 19 to 25 who had been to a bar at least once in the past year were recruited.

Fifty-one per cent of respondents reported no physically aggressive experiences in the past year. Meanwhile, 1.7 per cent reported perpetration only, 18.4 per cent reported being victims and 28.8 per cent reported both.

"What we found was these groups were different -- that perpetrators were more likely than victims to have high levels of trait aggression and hypermasculinity," said Wells from London, Ont., where she is an adjunct assistant professor in epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Western Ontario.

"When we talk to young men about aggression in bars, they generally report that it's normal and acceptable, and everyone expects to see aggression when they go to a bar. In a way we were expecting no difference between the two groups because there's a sense that it's ... a mutual conflict.

"However, what we're seeing here in these data is that it doesn't appear to be mutual. That there are some young men who are real victims, and that is that they do not have hypermasculine values, they do not have a propensity toward aggression, they may actually be real victims in the setting of the bar."

A possible limitation of the study, the authors acknowledge, is that respondents may have been biased in their reporting, and less likely to admit they were aggressors.

Wells, who's also affiliated with the University of Toronto, said there are great costs associated with alcohol-related injuries and a good proportion of those are related to violence.

Heavy episodic drinking -- consumption of five or more drinks by a male -- and frequent bar-going were also strongly linked to the perpetration of aggression, she said.

A Safer Bars Program developed by her colleague and co-author Kathryn Graham was shown to be effective in a study of Toronto bars, and has been implemented in some communities in Australia and the U.S., she noted.

It focuses on how bar staff can recognize early signs of aggression and respond to prevent incidents from escalating, she said.

The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission offers two training programs: ProServe, which covers responsible liquor service, and ProTect, which includes being proactive in spotting the possibility of an altercation before it happens.

"They watch the bar for hot spots, which are areas where altercations will frequently occur, so areas where you have a congestion of people, where there is bottlenecking, where they're standing in line jockeying for position," training facilitator Carmen Longworth said in an interview.

"Things like dance floors, because you may have people who are bumping into each other ... they are trained to monitor things like washrooms for altercations, for signs of drug use."

More than 8,500 people have taken the ProTect course, Longworth said, adding that they keep an eye out for "signs of anger, signs of people being anxious, tense, and to intervene at those early stages before they actually get angry about something."

Wells said researchers have found in interviews with young men who have experienced aggression in bars that they will often laugh it off, even if they've been to a hospital emergency department for stitches.

"Young men are so concerned about image, and saving face in the bar that it would be really difficult to tell from their posturing, their facial expressions, etc., that they are terrified and would like more than anything to get out of that situation," she said.

"I don't think that you would be able to tell who were the victims and who were the perpetrators, unless you can hear the dialogue, perhaps."

Over and over again, young men will say that if a buddy is in a fight, it's their responsibility to back him up, Wells said.

"They don't go over to their friend and say, 'Oh, come on, it's not worth it, let's go.' They actually go in with fists, and that in turn contributes to the escalation of the incident."

Wells said the findings of her study suggest that perceptions regarding the extent to which violence is mutual need to be challenged.

"It really boils down to changing attitudes about aggression and about masculinity."

Some men as they get older quit the bar scene, or go to quieter bars, to avoid the possibility of violence, Wells said.

"They start saying, 'Well, it's just not worth it."'