Violence
Bump up against a Northerner, frost the slight with an insult, and
he's likely to toss it off with a shrug or a laugh. Not so a Southerner.
You're likely to awaken anger and to prime visions of violence.
An insult has different emotional meanings for Northerners and
Southerners, finds a University of Michigan researcher. And that, he
says, makes the South a hotbed of homicide.
All the violence stems not from some intrapsychic source but a
cultural code of honor born of a pig-herding past, claims Richard E.
Nisbett, Ph.D. It's the legacy of Scotch-Irish settlers who brought with
them the tough defensive stance herders the world over assume to protect
their livelihood from rustlers.
It's long been claimed that the South and western regions settled
by Southerners are more violent. Even de Tocqueville couldn't help
noticing. Nisbett's detailed analysis of homicide rates from FBI files
demonstrates that they're not only higher in the South, but highest in
small Southern towns and cities and rural areas, especially the hills and
dry plains appropriate for herding.
For small cities, homicide rates are three times higher in the
South than in New England, Nisbett told the American Psychological
Association meeting in Washington, D.C. In subregions such as the Texas
Panhandle, the homicide rate is five times that in the similar terrain of
Nebraska.
The data dispute time-worn explanations of such difference -- the
heat, poverty, or the legacy of slavery. instead, they point to cultural
factors, as do mounds of historical and anecdotal evidence.
For example, there's a documented preference for violent activities
and rough pastimes that are legal or socially condoned -- from more hunting
licenses per capita to college football player production to use of
corporal punishment in schools. Attitude studies show that Southerners
are more opposed to gun control and in favor of whatever war the U.S. is
fighting and of spanking as a discipline technique.
In scrutinizing national opinion surveys, Nisbett found that white
male Southerners don't endorse violence in general -- but in three specific
ways: for protection, in response to insults, and in the socialization of
children. Asked whether a man has the right to kill to defend his home,
36 percent of Southerners say yes, versus 18 percent of
Northerners.
But the clincher came in the lab. Nisbett and colleagues devised a
clever strategy of insult that was not terribly personal. When put to the
test, Southern males reacted with anger (85 percent), Northerners with
amusement. And given hypothetical scenarios, they got angrier in response
to possible provocation and then responded more violently to later
insults.
Southerners, concludes Nisbett, are highly sensitive to
provocations that can be interpreted as insults. "By virtue of the
emotional meaning that the insult has for him, the Southerner is more
likely to display anger in situations where escalation is dangerous, and
is more vulnerable to thoughts of violence in those situations"
That is, for him the best self-defense is a violent offense. What
worries Nisbett is that 'cracker' culture, rooted in long-ago rural
economic necessity, is now spreading to urban working-class America
because it adds a romantic dash to everyday life.
Tags:
american psychological association,
code of honor,
college football player,
corporal punishment in schools,
defense,
defensive stance,
fbi files,
homicide rate,
homicide rates,
hunting licenses,
insult,
irish settlers,
legacy of slavery,
northerners,
region,
richard e nisbett,
rustlers,
scotch irish,
south,
southerners,
texas panhandle,
violence,
violent activities,
visions of violence,
western regions
