Epicurus
Reasonable
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/712842.html
The American South has long been more violent than the North. Colorful descriptions of duels, feuds, bushwhackings, and lynchings feature prominently in visitors’ accounts, newspaper articles, and autobiographies from the eighteenth century onward. Statistics bear out these impressions. For example, over the period 1865–1915, the homicide rate in the South was ten times the current rate for the whole United States, and twice the rate in our most violent cities. Modern homicide statistics tell the same story.
In their book, Culture of Honor, psychologists Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue that the South is more violent than the North because southern people have culturally acquired beliefs about personal honor that are different from their northern counterparts. Southerners, they argue, believe more strongly than Northerners that a person’s reputation is important and worth defending even at great cost. As a consequence, arguments and confrontations that lead to harsh words or minor scuffles in Amherst or Ann Arbor often escalate to lethal violence in Asheville or Austin.
What else could explain these differences? Some feature of the southern environment, such as its greater warmth, could explain why Southerners are more violent. Such hypotheses are plausible, and Nisbett and Cohen are at pains to test them. Northerners and Southerners might differ genetically, but this hypothesis is not very plausible. The settlers of the North and South came mostly from the British Isles and adjacent areas of northwestern Europe. Human populations are quite well mixed on this scale.
Nisbett and Cohen support their hypothesis with an impressive range of evidence. Let’s start with statistical patterns of violence. In the rural and small-town South, murder rates are elevated for arguments among friends and acquaintances, but not for killings committed in the course of other felonies. In other words, in the South men are more likely than Northerners to kill an acquaintance when an argument breaks out in a bar, but they are no more likely to kill the guy behind the counter when they knock off a liquor store. Thus, Southerners seem to be more violent than other Americans only in situations that involve personal honor. Competing hypotheses don’t do so well: neither white per-capita income nor hot climate nor history of slavery explain this variation in homicide.
Differences in what people say about violence also support the “culture of honor” hypothesis. For example, Nisbett and Cohen asked people to read vignettes in which a man’s honor was challenged—sometimes trivially (for example, by insults to his wife), and in other cases seriously (for example, by stealing his wife). Southern respondents were more likely than Northerners to say that violent responses were justified in all cases, and that one would “not be much of a man” unless he responded violently to insults. In the case of more serious affronts, southern respondents were almost twice as likely to say that shooting the perpetrator was justified.
The American South has long been more violent than the North. Colorful descriptions of duels, feuds, bushwhackings, and lynchings feature prominently in visitors’ accounts, newspaper articles, and autobiographies from the eighteenth century onward. Statistics bear out these impressions. For example, over the period 1865–1915, the homicide rate in the South was ten times the current rate for the whole United States, and twice the rate in our most violent cities. Modern homicide statistics tell the same story.
In their book, Culture of Honor, psychologists Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue that the South is more violent than the North because southern people have culturally acquired beliefs about personal honor that are different from their northern counterparts. Southerners, they argue, believe more strongly than Northerners that a person’s reputation is important and worth defending even at great cost. As a consequence, arguments and confrontations that lead to harsh words or minor scuffles in Amherst or Ann Arbor often escalate to lethal violence in Asheville or Austin.
What else could explain these differences? Some feature of the southern environment, such as its greater warmth, could explain why Southerners are more violent. Such hypotheses are plausible, and Nisbett and Cohen are at pains to test them. Northerners and Southerners might differ genetically, but this hypothesis is not very plausible. The settlers of the North and South came mostly from the British Isles and adjacent areas of northwestern Europe. Human populations are quite well mixed on this scale.
Nisbett and Cohen support their hypothesis with an impressive range of evidence. Let’s start with statistical patterns of violence. In the rural and small-town South, murder rates are elevated for arguments among friends and acquaintances, but not for killings committed in the course of other felonies. In other words, in the South men are more likely than Northerners to kill an acquaintance when an argument breaks out in a bar, but they are no more likely to kill the guy behind the counter when they knock off a liquor store. Thus, Southerners seem to be more violent than other Americans only in situations that involve personal honor. Competing hypotheses don’t do so well: neither white per-capita income nor hot climate nor history of slavery explain this variation in homicide.
Differences in what people say about violence also support the “culture of honor” hypothesis. For example, Nisbett and Cohen asked people to read vignettes in which a man’s honor was challenged—sometimes trivially (for example, by insults to his wife), and in other cases seriously (for example, by stealing his wife). Southern respondents were more likely than Northerners to say that violent responses were justified in all cases, and that one would “not be much of a man” unless he responded violently to insults. In the case of more serious affronts, southern respondents were almost twice as likely to say that shooting the perpetrator was justified.
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