THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 19, 1996 TAG: 9604190541
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: HEARST NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Two university psychology professors say they have scientific evidence that Southerners are more prone to violence than Northerners.
Using crime statistics, opinion polls and their own experiments, Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen argue in a new book that the South's ``culture of honor'' is alive and well - and responsible for higher murder rates in the region.
``Southerners believe that violence is appropriate for purposes of self-protection and . . . in response to an insult,'' Nisbett said.
He and Cohen trace that attitude to immigrants from ``the fringes of Britain'' - especially Scotland and Ireland - who settled the region from the late 17th to the early 19th centuries.
Today's proclivity to violence ``stems from the fact that much of the South was a lawless frontier region settled by people whose economy was originally based on herding,'' the authors conclude in their book, ``Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South.''
Professor Nisbett, who teaches at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, spent the first 17 years of his life in El Paso, Texas. He has also lived in New York, Boston and New Haven, Conn. Cohen, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana, is a lifelong Northerner.
``Herding people all over the world are tough guys,'' Nisbett said. ``They're tough guys for a very good reason: Somebody can take their wealth in an instant.''
In the more densely populated North, people could rely on officials such as sheriffs and police to help enforce laws. But Southerners and other people on the frontier often had to protect themselves, Nisbett and Cohen argue in the book.
KEYWORDS: STUDY VIOLENCE by CNB