An open thread: The attack that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his staff appears to be read one of two ways in most discussion this morning. The first is that it is evidence of a rising tide of violent extremism in transitional Libya. The second is that Libya has yet to build the police and justice system necessary to counter threats from its murderous, but unrepresentative fringe. The former argument, which supposes an Arab Spring leading to a so-called "Islamist winter," has gotten significant media attention. The latter argument has gotten less public traction. It ... Read More
Psychopaths’ Brains Deviate—And That’s Good
June 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
When it comes to committing violent crime, psychopaths may not be bad to the bone, but a new brain study suggests they may lack key neural structures—literally less gray matter—involved in empathy, moral reasoning, and feelings of guilt. And that gives grounds for optimism about the potential to rehabilitate nonpsychopathic offenders, according to a British neuroscientist who studies the brains of the violent. Those neural deficiencies seem to set psychopaths' brains apart from the brains of other violent offenders without psychopathic traits, says Dr. Nigel Blackwood. The King’s ... Read More
Television Violence Enticing, But Not Satisfying
March 13, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Why is there so much graphic violence in contemporary entertainment? Producers will tell you the answer is simple: because people enjoy it. According to newly published research, the real reason may be: Because it’s easy to market. When it comes to graphic gore, there’s a gap between what whets our appetite and what we actually find satisfying. That’s the conclusion of a study by Indiana University scholars Andrew Weaver and Matthew Kobach, which found students were enticed by descriptions of violent scenes, but actually enjoyed the programs more when those elements were edited ... Read More
Rating LA’s Safety Levels by ZIP Code
December 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Crime in Los Angeles has been falling for years. The numbers have gotten smaller the last nine years in a row, and in 2010 the city’s murder rate fell to the lowest it has been in four decades. In celebrating that macro-level trend, though, it’s easy to lose sight that a wide gap still exists between the city’s safest neighborhoods and its roughest ones, where homicide remains the leading cause of premature death for young men. In these neighborhoods, researchers have found that 90 percent of children report having seen or suffered from felony-level violence, and a third have tested ... Read More
When Memes Collide: Tank Man, Pepper Spray Cop
December 2, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Thanks to quick-thinking protesters and bystanders carrying cellphone cameras, Web surfers around the world quickly learned the story of what happened at UC Davis on November 18. The event began with students concerned about local issues (university budget cuts and tuition hikes) and a national struggle (Occupy Wall Street) staging a sit-down protest. When they refused to budge, the day’s most dramatic moments came, as campus police wielding canisters of pepper spray gassed the unarmed youths, then removed them from the area. Still and moving images of this confrontation appeared online ... Read More
What Causes Conflict?
July 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
From tangling with the boss to fighting with the kids, conflict is a daily ingredient of most of our lives. And it isn't just humans. It is a big part of the lives among many species that live in social groups, from lions to chimpanzees. In this week's Curiouser & Curiouser podcast, Dr. Simon DeDeo talks about his research into the hidden order behind conflict, an order that connects humans with animals. DeDeo is a physicist at the Santa Fe Institute who brings new mathematical approaches to study complicated problems in biology, like conflict.Here, he discusses a recent paper in the ... Read More
Latest Evidence: Behavior Link Between Violent Video Games and Children
June 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The Supreme Court today struck down a California law barring the sale of violent video games to children. By a vote of 7 to 2, the justices ruled that the law violated the First Amendment right to free speech. In a concurring vote, Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Chief Justice John Roberts) wrote that a more carefully crafted law restricting such sales might be constitutional. According to Adam Liptak of The New York Times, he argued that the California law “was too vague, even though it was meant to address an authentic problem.” So, are violent video game an authentic problem? Can ... Read More
Congo’s Violent Rape Epidemic Needs a Cure
June 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
November is hot in Congo. Every month is hot in Congo. So it's likely their faces shone with sweat when the first residents of Duru, in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, raced from mud hut to mud hut with a warning that sounded like, "El are ah!" That's "LRA," in French or the Congolese dialect Lingala. For years, the rebel Lord's Resistance Army has haunted northeastern Congo. Chased from neighboring Uganda in 2005 by the Ugandan army, the LRA found heavily forested, poorly governed Congo ideal for hiding and ripe for pillage. For more than two decades, the LRA had fought to ... Read More
Staunching Aggression From the Womb
March 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Crime and delinquency have roots in the womb, and so the risks can and should be addressed early on, even before a child is born, a University of Pennsylvania researcher says. According to a large body of research, the early risk factors that may predispose a child to violence include teen pregnancy, birth complications, lead exposure, head injury, child abuse, and maternal stress and depression. Jianghong Liu, an assistant professor at Penn’s School of Nursing and School of Medicine, argues that these factors, whether biological, psychological or environmental, can interact with each ... Read More
The Invisible Hate Crime
March 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In February 2010, Jennifer Daugherty, a 30-year-old, mentally challenged woman from Greensburg, Pa., was brutally murdered by six people pretending to be her good friends. Holding her hostage for days, the perpetrators allegedly tortured Daugherty, shaving her head, binding her with Christmas decorations, beating her with a towel rack and vacuum cleaner, feeding her detergent, urine and various medications and then forcing her to write a suicide note, before stabbing her to death. The sadistic attack on Daugherty was anything but unique. Still, few Americans are aware of the special ... Read More
