Imitative violence in the real world: A reanalysis of homicide rates following championship prize fights

College Football Games and Crime

“…Miller et al (1991) reanalyzed the data collected by Phillips (1983), confirming this basic pattern of results. Although the three-day lag suggests that the estimated relationship between prizefights and homicides could be spurious (Baron and Reiss 1985), the work of Phillips (1983) and Miller (1991) has been used to buttress the claim that individuals are capable of reacting quite violently to sporting events viewed on the television as opposed to in person. 3 Here, we examine daily offense data from 26 police agencies over the course of 6 football seasons (2000 to 2005).…”

Class Inequality and Adult Attainment Projects among Middle-Aged Men in the United States, 1980-2010

“…Support for the idea that imitation drives excess suicides is also found in extension to other outcome variables where imitation may operate. Thus, the suicide findings are nestled in a larger literature that looks at imitation of highly publicized violence, the effect of heavy weight championship prize fights on homicides (Phillips 1983;Miller et al 1991), and publicized mass homicides on other mass homicides (Cantor et al 1999). While this wide body of work tends to use the same quasi-experimental design and paired t-tests, some studies have employed more sophisticated quantitative frameworks (Bollen and Phillips 1982;Wasserman 1984).…”

Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses of Historical Data

“…A considerable literature on the extent to which mass violence and personal aggression are increased by high ambient temperatures has also developed (Baron & Ransberger 1978;Carlsmith & Anderson 1979;Anderson 1987Anderson , 1989Anderson & Anderson 1996). One inquiry on this subject took advantage of sport statistics (Reifman et al 1991), a form of historical data that has been used to examine other determinants of aggression as well (Frank & Gilovich 1988, Miller et al 1991). 3.…”

“…Probably the most dramatic examples concern human violence. Besides studying the factors underlying homicide and other forms of personal aggression (Anderson & Anderson 1984, Phillips & Hensley 1984, Miller et al 1991, psychologists have made major strides in understanding the psychological roots of war and other forms of collective violence 630 SIMONTON (Winter 1987a(Winter , 1993Suedfeld & Bluck 1988). This understanding includes increased knowledge about international crises (Raphael 1982, Guttieri et al 1995 and what it takes to make adaptive responses to those crises .…”