It’s well-established that domestic violence is bad for the children directly exposed to it (and possibly their classmates as well) but experts still debate the drivers of family violence. Economists have traditionally characterized violence as a signal to outside parties or as part of an incentive contract between family members. Others believe that violent episodes occur when the perpetrator loses control. A new paper by David Card and Gordon Dahl tests the latter explanation using data on domestic violence occurring on Sundays during the NFL season. Card and Dahl hypothesize that “negative emotional cues” (i.e., a loss by the home football team) make a loss of control more likely. They find that unexpected losses by the home team “lead to an 8 percent increase in police reports of at-home male-on-female intimate-partner violence.” Furthermore, unexpected losses in important or particularly frustrating games have a 50 to 100 percent larger effect on domestic violence. The authors conclude that “at least a fraction of intimate partner violence appears to represent excessive behavior that is triggered by payoff-irrelevant emotional shocks, rather than strategic instrumental violence that is used to control an intimate partner.” [%comments]
When Football Violence Turns Real
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@Bill: Yes, it’s probably worse for the target of the violence in an immediate sense. The problem with children is captured in the old saw, “I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”
Indeed. Talk about your infectious memes.
“…rather than strategic instrumental violence that is used to control an intimate partner.”
What exactly is this? Is this just another codified sentence for domestic violence?
The title of this post should be when violent acts influence others to be violent. Football violence is plenty real to begin with.
Can anyone tell me what this is supposed to mean? I’m having a bit of trouble conceptualizing what kind of signal is being sent that relates to economics:
“Economists have traditionally characterized violence as a signal to outside parties or as part of an incentive contract between family members.”
I remember hearing a statistic in the 90s once about domestic abuse in Italy increasing during national soccer matches. I feel like this has been studied before…
@Tracy – the 2008 Superbowl got 97.5 million viewers. That’s a pretty broad group to generalize about. There may be correlation probably runs the other way:
Guys who are abusive are more likely to watch football.
NOT
Guys who watch football are more likely to abuse.
There’s an implied causation in that direction that I doubt holds up. The test of that statement would be how many people who have no other history of domestic violence start after they begin watching football.
This subject was discussed appropriately in the opening pages of “Who Stole Feminism?” by Summers, a professor of philosophy at the time. Reports of just how dangerous it is for women * children when the home team loses was claimed to a ludicrously exaggerated extend by somebody who had absolutely no scientific ground for the guess, and was then taken up and broadvast — disgracefully — by sundry irresponsible persons on the ground that “sound right, must BE right” principles.Summers was able to trace this process by making a remarkably small number of phone calls.
Similar principles apply in news coverage to this day. One outstanding example: the jabbering tribe of professional commentators who have jumped on the bandwagon of claimants that Obama is “dithering” about sending more troops to Afghanistan. There is no proof of such dithering, and no proof that the president is doing other thank taking appropriate time and counsel to consider this weighty matter.
I have no informed opinion whether the president is or is not dithering about this matter. I’m startled and depressed that many others, just as ignorant as I — as they clearly display — are ready to trouble the national mind with this unqualified assertion that dithering is what;s going on in the White House about this matter.
Underlying much of this chorus, I suggest, is that the commentators require or demand that presidents act as promptly in making grave decisions as promptly as commentators must when choosing and preparing a subject for publication in the next morning’s newspaper, or this evening’s electronic commentary/ I hope no president ever agrees. Obama doesn’t seem to..
this study can’t possibly be right, otherwise the number of wifebeaters in Detroit would be skyrocketing!?
I don’t think that this is true at all living in Denver, Colorado and going to the Broncos game when they faced the Pittsburgh Steelers when we lost 28 to 10 I stayed for the whole game and after the game yeah it was chaotic but nobody was forcing a fight it was more like disappointment. I will admit though three fights did break out during the game but nothing about the game afterwards.
Smilar observation was made by the police in New Zealand when the All Blacks were knocked out of the last World Cup of Rugby.