The European Journal of Public Health Advance Access originally published online on January 30, 2006
The European Journal of Public Health 2006 16(3):259-265; doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckl007
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Conflict, Disaster, Homicide |
Acceptance of killing and homicide rates in nineteen nations
Alfred L. McAlister** University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston–School of Public Health, Austin, TX, USA
Correspondence: Alfred L. McAlister, Professor of Behavioral Sciences 7320 N. Mopac, Suite 300, Austin, TX 78731, USA, tel: +1 512 346 6163, e-mail: Alfred.L.McAlister{at}uth.tmc.edu
Received November 8, 2004, accepted November 22, 2005
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Abstract |
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Background: International variation in homicide rates may be attributable to cultural differences in acceptance of moral justifications for killing. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationships between measures of attitudes towards the justification of killing and homicide rates in diverse international populations. Methods: Four studies assessed variations in acceptance of killing among adults and young people in nineteen nations and four areas in the USA. Study 1 (1996–1997) assessed adult attitudes in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Spain, and Venezuela with personal interviews in major cities. Study 2 (1999–2001) assessed attitudes among high school students in Denmark, Finland, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Taiwan, and the UK with paper surveys administered in classrooms. Study 3 (2001) used telephone interviews to measure the equivalent attitudes among the US samples nationally and from regions in Texas. Study 4 (2002–2003) used paper surveys in classrooms to measure attitudes among high school students in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, and the Russian Federation. Results: The acceptance of killing varied significantly among genders and national/regional groups. The mean attitude scores in the four studies combined were significantly correlated with national/regional homicide rates and the amount of variance explained was similar to that for social inequality (GINI). Together the attitude scores and GINI explained 65% of the variance in homicide rates. Conclusion: This study provides evidence that variations in attitudes toward the justification of killing may be related to international differences in homicide rates.
Keywords: cross-cultural, homicide, international, violence
The rate at which people kill one another varies considerably between nations and there are many possible explanations for these differences in homicide rates. Most of the variation is attributed to structural factors such as economic inequality and effectiveness of police and criminal justice systems.1–3 However, some variation may also be explained by national differences in attitudes regarding the social acceptability of killing.4
Previous studies have shown that there are regional differences in attitudes toward killing in the USA5 and that state-level variations in homicide rates are related to both cultural and economic factors.6 For example, the death penalty finds greater acceptance in the southern states of the USA than in the north. Attitudes toward killing to protect property or to punish rapists show similar differences. Cohen and Nisbett have shown that these attitudes may be responsible for regional differences in homicide rates within the USA.7
According to social cognitive theory, moral restraints against killing are disinhibited by psychological mechanisms that make the taking of life an acceptable or worthy act, e.g. by providing moral justifications for killing.8 Among individuals and populations with positive attitudes toward killing, moral justification may be the central issue. To measure the collective attitudes that can lead to high homicide rates within populations, population surveys should focus on the degree to which people accept or support moral justifications for killing. Such measures should include justification of killing for economic reasons and for revenge, as well as justification of state-sponsored execution of criminals.
Since the pioneering work by Blumenthal et al. on how men in the USA justify violence,9 most studies of this topic have used single survey items to make comparisons between populations with higher or lower levels of violence.7,10 Although some preliminary work has been done in Colombia,11 instruments have not been developed for international comparative studies. In its 2002 World Report on Violence and Health,12 the World Health Organization has called for improvements in international data collection capacities and more research on causes of violence at the societal level. This report describes findings from four studies in which multi-faceted attitudinal measures were used to assess justification of killing, and reports the correlation between attitudes and national homicide rates.
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Methods |
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The investigators and locations for the four studies are presented in Study investigators section. The survey questions about moral justifications for killing were based on previously published USA7 and international10 studies of attitudes toward violence and adapted for use in a self-administered survey and a random-digit-dialed survey. The questions, posed as statements with which the respondent can agree or disagree, concerned three types of killing:1 in defense of property,2 if someone kills a person who has raped their child, and3 capital punishment (the death penalty). Item wordings and response options are listed in the Appendix and use Likert-scaled answer choices ranging from strong agreement to strong disagreement with acceptance of killing. The scores were computed by calculating the sum for the items and converting them so that the score ranged from –1 to 1, with lower scores indicating least favourable attitudes toward killing.
Study investigators
- Study 1: PAHO ACTIVA
- Brazil, Universidade de Sao Paulo: Dr Leandro Piquet Carneiro; Brazil, Universidade Federal de Bahía: Dr Ceci Vilar Noronha; Chile, Sur Profesionales Consultores, Ltda.: Dr Enrique Oviedo Saavedra; Costa Rica, Universidad de Costa Rica: Lic. Marco V. Fournier; El Salvador, Universidad Centro Americana "José Simeón Cañas": Lic. José Miguel Cruz Alas;
Spain, Universidad Complutense de Madrid: Dr Florentino Moreno; Venezuela, Laboratorio de Ciencias Sociales: Dr Roberto Briceño-León.
- Study 2: International Federation of Medical Students' Associations, Standing Committee on Refugees and Peace, Working Group on Moral Disengagement: Austria: Tadeja Urban; Denmark: Ane Korsholm; Finland: Patrick Sandström, Anu Laulajainen, Lina Udd; Malta: Lisa Pullicino; The Netherlands: Akke van der Bij; Slovenia: Veronica Rutar; Sweden: Henrik Petersson; Taiwan: Yu-Chen Tsai; UK: Anita Sugavanam, Chris Hopkins.
- Study 3: Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research, University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX: Alfred McAlister, Jeannie Grussendorf, Ted Morrison, Donaji Stelzig, Shaohua Hu, Ionut Chiriac.
- Study 4:
Russia, Sociological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences: Maia Rusakova, Anna Yakovleva, Yakov Gilinsky;
Belarus, Support Center for Associations and Foundations: Yury Zagoumannov;
Georgia, Physicians for Human Rights Georgia: Maia Buchukuri;
Armenia, Human Rights Organization, Garik Vardgesyan.
Study 1
The first study used data from the project ACTIVA (Attitudes and Violence in the America) survey.13 The survey was developed in partnership with principal investigators of each city, the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization Collaborating Center at the University of Texas. The survey was conducted in metropolitan areas of Latin America (Spanish-speaking nations in Central and South America) and Spain. Samples, representative by socioeconomic stratum, were taken by cluster stratification to ensure proportional socioeconomic condition and population density. Systematic selection of adult individuals, between the ages of 18 and 70, was done by household between July 1996 and March 1997. Low socioeconomic status areas comprised roughly half of the samples from most cities. While non-response rates varied across cities, a greater non-response rate came from the higher socioeconomic stratum. Interviews were conducted in a face-to-face format by trained interviewers in the respondents' homes and in Spanish. Attitude toward killing questions are presented in table 1 and were embedded in a longer survey of over 200z questions. Survey times were dependent on respondents' answers to previous questions as many of the questions assessed information about family members.
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Study 2
Student researchers affiliated with the Standing Committee on Refugees and Peace of the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations and the University of Texas School of Public Health conducted surveys of students in selected high schools in nine nations during 1999–2001: Denmark, Finland, Malta, Mexico, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden, Taiwan, and UK. The schools were selected in an effort to obtain at least generally representative student groups for each country. In each country the questionnaire was translated into the local language and then independently re-translated back into English, with appropriate modifications where discrepancies were detected. Parental notification and student consent procedures were reviewed by ethics committees in each country.
In the selected schools, surveys were distributed by medical student researchers or by teachers to all students or to selected groups of students between the ages of 14 and 17 in their classrooms. After they and their parents received a written and (for students) verbal explanation of who had developed the survey and a request for consent to participate, all students in attendance were asked to volunteer to complete the surveys. No individual identifiers were collected. All or most of the students agreed to complete the surveys in each school, but exact response rates were not calculated. The questions about attitudes toward killing were contained in a longer, self-administered questionnaire covering several other topics.
Study 3
The study population includes random-digit-dialed nation-wide, Texas statewide, and two countywide samples (Travis and Harris County) including the metropolitan areas of Austin and Houston. Adults were interviewed by trained interviewers at the University of Texas Office of Survey Research (OSR), during the summer of 2001. The OSR purchased a random-digit-dialing sample. They identified working telephone exchanges throughout the entire state of Texas, and systematically generated telephone numbers by four-digit randomization. Additionally, random-digit numbers were compared against a database containing business telephone numbers to increase the chances of reaching a residential number. To further ensure randomization, the respondent within each household with the most recent birthday was selected. Survey supervisors verified 10% of the completed interviews during the data collection period to ensure that interviews were conducted with the correct respondent. The attitude toward killing questions of interest in this study were embedded in a survey of 61 items.
Study 4
Researchers in four CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) nations (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, and Russia) conducted surveys of students in selected high schools during 2002–2003, with local ethics committees formed to review and approve procedures. The schools were chosen in an effort to obtain at least generally representative student groups. In each country the questionnaire was translated into the local language and then independently re-translated back into English. Where discrepancies were detected, appropriate modifications were made. Surveys were distributed to all students in their classrooms. After receiving a written (parents and students) and verbal (students only) explanation of who was conducting the survey and a request for consent to participate, students in attendance were asked to volunteer to complete the surveys, in which no individual identifiers were collected. While exact response rates were not calculated, most of the students agreed to complete the surveys in each school. The questions about attitudes toward killing were contained in a longer, self-administered questionnaire covering several other topics.
Data from each country and study were transmitted electronically or by post and assembled in a combined data set for analysis with SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). As can be seen in the Appendix, the wording of the attitudes toward killing questions and/or the response choices varied by study. Separate attitude scores were calculated for each study by adding together the responses for three or four questions, dividing the total by the number of questions and transforming values so that they ranged between –1 (strongest possible rejection of killing) and +1 (strongest possible acceptance of killing) with a midpoint of zero. Means and standard deviations for each item and for the overall attitude measurement were calculated for each nation. In each study, the Pearson correlations between the items were examined. Scores were compared for males and females and for national/regional groups. Final analyses examined correlations between the mean attitude score from each study area, and the social inequality (General Index of National Inequality) and homicide rate in that area for 2 year intervals including the survey dates, based on WHO and USA state and regional specific cause mortality reported by local authorities with GINI estimates from the World Bank (figures 1 and 2).3
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Results |
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Study 1
A total of 7048 adults from five nations were interviewed. Sample sizes by nation and gender are presented in table 1. Females comprised 58.5% of the sample. Responses to the three attitudes toward killing questions were significantly (P < 0.001) correlated with one another, as shown in table 2. One way ANOVA analysis showed that the mean scores for attitudes toward killing differed between national groups (F4, 7043 = 184.36, P < 0.001). Levene's test of homogeneity of variances showed that the variance was not equal across groups; therefore, Tamhane's test of pairwise contrasts was used to detect significant differences between groups. This test showed all pairwise contrasts of nations' mean scores to be significant at the P < 0.001 level.
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Study 2
A total of 2177 students from nine nations were interviewed. Sample sizes by nation and gender are presented in table 1. Females comprised 52.4% of the sample. Table 2 shows that, in the study, the responses to the questions about the three types of killing were significantly correlated with one another (P < 0.001). One way ANOVA analysis showed that the mean scores for attitudes toward killing differed between national groups (F8, 2168 = 15.22, P < 0.001). Tamhane's test of pairwise contrasts showed that the mean score for Taiwan (the nation with the highest score) for all students is significantly higher than the mean scores for all other national groups except Finland and Denmark. The mean score for Finland is significantly higher than those for Malta, Slovenia, and Sweden. The mean score for Denmark is significantly higher than that for Sweden. The mean score for Sweden (the nation with the lowest score) is significantly lower than mean scores for all nations except Malta, The Netherlands, and Slovenia.
Study 3
A total of 2155 adults were interviewed from four regions in the USA. Sample sizes by region and gender are presented in table 1. Females comprised 57.5% of the sample. Responses to the questions about the three types of killing were significantly correlated with one another (P < 0.001) as shown in table 2. Table 1 presents data for gender and regional differences. One way ANOVA analysis showed that the mean scores for attitudes toward killing differed between regions (F3, 2151 = 11.03, P < 0.001). Tamhane's test of pairwise contrasts showed that the mean score for Texas respondents is significantly higher than the mean score for respondents in Austin and the USA (excluding Texas) group. The mean score for Austin respondents is significantly lower than the means for respondents in Texas (excluding Austin and Houston) and Houston.
Study 4
A total of 1828 students were interviewed in four nations. Table 1 presents sample sizes by nation and gender. Females comprised 49.3% of the sample. Responses to the questions about the three types of killing were significantly correlated with one another (P < 0.001) as shown in Table 2. Table 1 presents data for gender and regional differences. One way ANOVA analysis showed that the mean scores for attitudes toward killing differs between regions (F3, 1824 = 11.44, P < 0.001). Tamhane's test of pairwise contrasts showed that the mean score for respondents in Belarus is significantly higher than the mean scores for those in Armenia and Georgia. The mean score for respondents in the Russian Federation is significantly higher than the mean score for those in Armenia. The mean score for Armenia is significantly lower than the other three nations' mean scores.
The gender-adjusted mean attitude scores (average of the mean scores for males and females) for each national group are shown in figure 1, plotted against the national homicide rate in each of the nations where students were surveyed. The figure shows that, in this pilot study of limited samples, national differences in mean scores are strongly correlated with the natural log of the homicide rates (Pearson's correlation coefficient r = 0.66, P < 0.001, one-tailed test). The correlation between the natural log of the homicide rates and GINI coefficients was, figure 2, 0.63 (P < 0.01, one-tailed test). The correlation between the attitude scale score and the GINI coefficients was 0.26 (not significant). In a multiple regression analysis in which the mean attitude toward killing and the GINI coefficient for each of the 22 nations/regions were regressed on to the natural log of the homicide rate for each nation/region, the proportion of the total variance explained by the model was 65%; both the attitude scores and the GINI coefficients were statistically significant (P < 0.01) with respective standardized ßs of 0.53 and 0.49.
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Discussion |
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The four studies reported here employed slightly different wording in the measurement of attitudes toward the justification of killing. Study respondents were adults in Studies 1 and 3, and high school students in Studies 2 and 4. Personal interviews, telephone interviews, and questionnaires were used in different studies. These variations in methodology limit the degree to which data points from different studies can be considered comparable or representative of the national populations in which homicide rates were reported. Comparability of measurements translated into different languages and applied in different cultural contexts is also limited by possible differences in the interpretation and understanding of attitude statements. There are also likely to be problems with the comparability of homicide rates due to differences in levels of police reporting or other national or regional factors that influence the accuracy of that statistic. Thus the observed differences do not conclusively show that attitudes toward the justification of killing and homicidal behaviour are related. Although it was not feasible with the limited resources available for these studies, future investigations should employ strictly comparable measurements in representative samples of national populations.
Table 2 shows that support for the death penalty is only weakly correlated with acceptance of the other justifications for killing (independently for defense or revenge), except in Study 3. That study was done in the USA and the sample was largely from Texas, where the death penalty is often applied. Further studies are needed to more thoroughly examine attitudes toward diverse justifications for different forms of independent and state-sponsored killing to determine the degree to which they are related in different nations and regions.
Despite the methodological limitations of this research, a strong and statistically significant relationship was observed between the attitudinal measures and homicide rates in the populations where the attitudes were assessed. Although certainly imperfect, the research reported here provides the best current evidence that variations in attitudes toward the justification of killing may be related to international differences in homicide rates. If this proposition is true, it may be because1 an unmeasured third factor influences both variables,2 killing influence attitude or3 attitudes influence killings or4 both. If the latter two hypotheses are true, programs to reduce national or regional violence rates should expand their focus beyond individual and group interventions to promote changes in the attitudes toward violence in the whole society.
Key points
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Acknowledgments |
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This research was supported by a grant to the author from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The data were collected by investigators listed in the appendix. This research was supported in part by a grant to the University of Texas from the US National Institutes of Health.
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References |
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9 Blumenthal MD, Kahn RL, Andrews FM, et al. Justifying violence: Attitudes of American men. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 1972.
10 McAlister A, Sandström P, Puska P, et al. Attitudes towards war, killing and punishment of children among young people in Estonia, Finland, Romania, the Russian Federation, and the USA. Bull World Health Organ, 2001; 79 Suppl 5:382–7.[Web of Science][Medline]
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12 World Health Organization. World report on violence and health. Geneva: WHO, 2002.
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