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Social Correlates of Lethal Aggression

1990; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 66; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2466/pr0.1990.66.1.146

1558-691X

David Lester,

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

Whereas many researchers have explored the correlates of regional suicide rates or of regional homicide rates (Lester, 1988; Whitt, et a/., 1972; Whitt, 1985) suggested that suicide rates and homicide rates could be summed to give a measure of the lethal aggression rate of a society, and that the correlates of the lethal aggression rate might well be very different from those of the component parts of the rate (the homicide rate and the suicide rate). The present study was done to test the validity of Whitt's suggestion using data from a sample of the continental states of America in 1980. Suicide and homicide rates for 1780 for each of the 48 continental states of the USA were obtained from the V?tal Statistics of the United States, 1980. A variety of societal variables were chosen for inclusion in the analysis based upon previous research into regional correlates of suicide and homicide rates (Lester, 1788) obtained for 1780 mainly from the Statistical Abstract of the United States and the Census of the United States, 1980 published by the Census Bureau. These social variables were subjected to a principal components factor analysis with a varimax rotation using S P S S ~ . The rate of lethal aggression correlated very highly with the homicide rate (r = 0.90) and moderately with the suicide rate (r = 0 64). For these states, Whitt was incorrect in suggesting that the lethal aggression rate is different from the homicide rate. Both the lethal aggression rate and the homicide rate were correlated with scores on a factor which showed high loadings from latitude and the percentage of black citizens and with scores on a factor which showed high loadings from rates of divorce and interstate migration. It appears that, then, for the 48 continental states of the USA, lethal aggression and homicide are very similar indices.