Violence and U.S. regional culture.

@article{Nisbett1993ViolenceAU,
  title={Violence and U.S. regional culture.},
  author={Richard E. Nisbett},
  journal={The American psychologist},
  year={1993},
  volume={48 4},
  pages={
          441-9
        }
}
  • R. Nisbett
  • Published 1993
  • Political Science
  • The American psychologist
The U.S. South, and western regions of the U.S. initially settled by Southerners, are more violent than the rest of the country. Homicide rates for White Southern males are substantially higher than those for White Northern males, especially in rural areas. But only for argument-related homicides are Southern rates higher. Southerners do not endorse violence more than do Northerners when survey questions are expressed in general terms, but they are more inclined to endorse violence for… 
View on PubMed
www2.psych.ubc.ca
349 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
45
Background Citations
169
Methods Citations
10
Results Citations
13

Tables from this paper

349 Citations

Self-Protection and the Culture of Honor: Explaining Southern Violence

The southern United States has long been known to be more violent than the northern United States. The authors argue that this may be due in part to an ideology justifying violence for…

Law, social policy, and violence : The impact of regional cultures

Social policies reflect cultural values. Because of their frontier heritage, the U.S. South and West were hypothesized to have cultures favoring violence for self-protection. Predictions were…

THE SOUTHERN CULTURE OF HONOR AND VIOLENT ATTITUDES

ABSTRACT Research on subcultures of violence has mostly focused on the existence of a Southern subculture of violence or a black subculture of violence. Recent theorizing on this topic has addressed…

Field Experiments Examining the Culture of Honor: The Role of Institutions in Perpetuating Norms about Violence

Two field experiments illustrate how institutions of the U.S. South and West can help perpetuate violence related to a culture of honor. In Study 1, employers across the United States were sent…

A History of Violence: The Culture of Honor as a Determinant of Homicide in the US South

According to the culture of honor hypothesis, the high prevalence of homicide in the US South originates from the settlement of the region by herders from the fringes of Britain in the late 18th…

Regional Culture and Patterns of Homicide

In 1998, Cohen described a study showing that in the United States, regionally distributed culture controls the direction of the relationship between social stability and homicide rates. In the South…

Honor on Death Row

The Southern United States is described as having a culture of honor, an argument that has been used to explain higher crime rates in the Southern United States than in the rest of the country. This…

U.S. Southern and Northern Differences in Perceptions of Norms About Aggression

This article explores one reason why norms for male honor-related aggression persist in the U.S. South, even though they may no longer be functional. The authors suggest that, in addition to cultural…

A History of Violence: Testing the ‘Culture of Honor’ in the US South

Using historical data on early settlers to the United States, this paper tests and confirms the “Culture of Honor” hypothesis by socio-psychologists Dov Cohen and Richard Nisbett (1994, 1996). This…

Gun Cultures or Honor Cultures?: Explaining Regional and Race Differences in Weapon Carrying

We use the National Violence against Women (and Men) Survey to examine the effects of region and race on the tendency to carry weapons for protection. We find that Southern and Western whites are…
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 31 REFERENCES

Self-Protection and the Culture of Honor: Explaining Southern Violence

The southern United States has long been known to be more violent than the northern United States. The authors argue that this may be due in part to an ideology justifying violence for…

Homicide and a Regional Culture of Violence

The homicide rate in the United States has been very high relative to the rest of the modernized world for as far back as evidence is available. It has long been known that in the United States there…

CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC SOURCES OF HOMICIDE IN THE UNITED STATES

Are high rates of homicide better explained by cultural or economic factors? Some research suggests that a regional culture of violence underlies high rates of homicide, whereas other research…

The Cost of Inequality: Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime

The hypothesis tested is that variations in rates of urban criminal violence largely result from differences in racial inequality in socioeconomic conditions. Data on the 125 largest American…

Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South

"Cracker Culture" is a provocative study of social life in the Old South that probes the origin of cultural differences between the South and the North throughout American history. Among Scotch-Irish…

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America

Eighty percent of Americans have no British ancestors. According to David Hackett Fischer, however, their day-to-day lives are profoundly influenced by folkways transplanted from Britain to the New…

Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

The American South is a geographical entity, a historical fact, a place in the imagination, and the homeland of an array of Americans who consider themselves southerners. The region is often shrouded…

On justifying violence

I discuss the justification of political violence even within democracies. I define ‘violence’ and indicate how its evaluative force sometimes has conceptually distorting effects. Though acts of…

Democracy in America.

Abridged, with an Introduction by Patrick Renshaw. Democracy in America is a classic of political philosophy. Hailed by John Stuart Mill and Horace Greely as the finest book ever written on the…

Indians of the Plains

"Lowie's Indians of the Plains remains unsurpassed as a brief, detailed, and suggestive overview of the subject. It still serves as an excellent introduction to that vast body of information…