Gun Violence: Deadly Automatic Responses

“The crime problem in America is really about gun violence, which devastates families, communities and – by driving out people and businesses – even cities themselves. Nearly eight of every 10 murders in America was committed with a gun in 2020, according to data from Pew Research Center.

“Gun violence in America is not wholly driven by wars between gangs over drug-selling turf. It's not clear that our mental image of murders being due to a sort of rational benefit-cost type analysis, in which shootings are pre-planned and thought through, is right.

“They often start with something else entirely. Words – or arguments, to be more specific – are often the primary circumstance that leads to murders.

“A neighbor won't turn down their music. A landlord and tenant argue over unpaid rent. A group of teens think some other teens stole a bike. Someone gets cut off in traffic. All arguments that could have been de-escalated but weren't – and they end in tragedy because someone has a gun.”

(Jens Ludwig. “Opinion: The surprising solution to gun violence.” https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/23/opinions/surprising-solution-to-gun-violence-ludwig/index.html. CNN. April 23, 2022.)

Behavioral science offers a view on why we so often make mistakes in arguments and how our situations can make mistakes more likely. Please, read this entry to better understand gun violence and how it occurs.

Jens Ludwig – Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor, director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, codirector of the Education Lab, and codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime – expounds …

“Imagine we played a game where I quickly flashed a word and asked you to name the color of the ink in which the word was printed. I first show you 'blue,' displayed in blue ink. You say blue.

“Then I show you 'pink,' in pink ink. Great.

“Finally, I flash the word 'green' printed in red ink. Your first instinct would be to say 'green' because reading words presented before you is almost always the most helpful way to interact with words. You do it automatically.

(Jens Ludwig. “Opinion: The surprising solution to gun violence.” CNN. April 23, 2022.)

This experiment – known as the "Stroop test" – reveals something fundamental about how the human mind works: Conscious, deliberate thought is taxing, so our minds try to avoid it as much as possible. Instead, we tend to rely on automatic responses that work well for ordinary situations we see over and over.

The Stroop test shows us that those automatic responses can get us into trouble when they're over-generalized into uncommon situations. We make a mistake because we confuse an out-of-the-ordinary situation ("identify the ink color of the words in front of you") for an ordinary one ("read the words in front of you") and default to our automatic response.

Using this information, can you see how behavioral science helps us understand why gun violence is higher in some neighborhoods than in others? A large body of research from sociology suggests that people in disadvantaged areas – especially vulnerable youth – unfortunately learn they're on their own in terms of keeping themselves safe.

In neighborhoods where large numbers of local adults are incarcerated in the justice system, the young people who live there are very vulnerable to the intimidation, aggression and violence of others. They lack supervision and role models to help them successfully cope with such issues. As easy targets, their automatic response is to fight back. They do not want to be victimized.

Ludwig concludes:

“But the same mental shortcut that may allow young people to avoid being repeatedly harassed, picked on or beaten up outside of school puts them in danger when relied upon in an out-of-the-ordinary situation, like when someone has a gun.”

(Jens Ludwig. “Opinion: The surprising solution to gun violence.” CNN. April 23, 2022.)

 

This fight-back reflex is not strong in more economically and racially diverse neighborhoods where security guards, emergency phones, and caring adults are always around. The response of people there is to report threats, and when someone's got a gun, they do not rely on automatic responses.

Researchers Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir note in their book, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (2013) that stress depletes mental bandwidth and leads us to default more to our automatic responses. In the most disadvantaged neighborhoods that are most challenging to navigate, stress makes that navigation even more difficult.

Ludwig believes the key lesson is that criminal behavior is not fundamentally different from human behavior. Teens in affluent neighborhoods with lower instances of street violence are no more moral or thoughtful than teens anywhere else; it's that their lives demand less deliberate thinking to navigate because their situations are more forgiving.

He cites the federal government's Moving to Opportunity (MTO) initiative (1994) that helped families from economically distressed neighborhoods move to less distressed areas.

Most results of the initiative were disappoingting. Moving a few miles presumably didn't alter a participant's character, and the income of MTO families also didn't change when they moved. Yet, violent crime arrests of MTO teens plummeted by almost 40%. What changed? The difficulty of the situations they faced.

(Jeffrey Liebman et al. “Evaluating the Impact of Moving to Opportunity in the United States.” https://www.povertyactionlab.org/evaluation/evaluating-impact-moving-opportunity-united-states. J-Pal. MIT.)

Can you imagine the impact of ten minutes of bad decisions on a young person's life? As they navigate potentially violent situations, youth need proper tools to avoid serious and deadly confrontations. Reducing segregation and limiting the widespread availability of illegal guns help, of course. But, having adults around who can step in and help de-escalate augments before they spiral out of control is crucial. By teaching young people to slow down during stressful situations, it helps them make in-the-moment decisions that could otherwise lead to violence. 

Last Word

Behavior science has some timely answers to the epidemic of gun violence – answers that address the root causes. On the other hand, arrests and prison sentences are reactive outcomes that unfortunately do little to prevent this violence. Understanding human behavior helps create proactive behaviors that give young people those key 10 minutes back.

Bad people? Bad kids? They are not born that way – instead, they learn unacceptable conduct and condition themselves to their undesirable environments. To merely write them off is to accept their misconduct as what “those people” do.

According to a study by Jeffrey Swanson – a Duke University psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor and a leading expert on U.S. gun violence – published in the Journal of Behavioral Sciences and the Law (2015), the overriding explanation for firearm homicides that occur in the U.S. is arguments, often involving alcohol, often occurring in underprivileged areas, or in troubled domestic settings. Swanson's conclusion – America has an anger problem, and far too many angry Americans have easy access to guns.

The study revealed that nearly nine percent of the U.S. population has a serious anger problem and access to guns at home. The study culled data from a National Institute of Mental Health funded survey estimating the prevalence of different kinds of mental disorders across the U.S.

"Anger is a normal human emotion," Swanson said. "Everybody gets angry. But these are people who, when they get angry, break and smash things, and get into physical fights. … People who have a really short fuse," and who can at times be "uncontrollable and destructive."

According to Swanson's research, about 1.5 percent of the population "have this impulsive, angry behavior and are carrying a gun around with them out in public." They are proverbial “loose cannons.”

(Jeffrey W. Swanson, Ph.D, Nancy A. Sampson, B.A.. Maria V. Petukhova, Ph.D et al. “Guns, Impulsive Angry Behavior, and Mental Disorders: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R). Behav. Sci. Law 33. April 2015.)

The answer to gun violence is not more and bigger guns. Much of the answer lies in what causes the violence. Groups like the American Psychological Association – an association of psychologist practitioners, researchers and educators with expertise in human behavior – contribute to the national dialogue to prevent gun violence. The APA must be fully engaged with the federal government and organizational partners to achieve this goal of prevention.

Before ranting about the moral decline of America and the need for law and order, we must consider how many people are conditioned to automatically respond with violence to disagreements and arguments. And, it seems that the fist fight of the past has escalated into the gunfight of today. When faced with stress, people with easy access to guns commit horrible and deadly crimes.

Research confirms that the root causes of gun violence in the United States include the following issues of social and economic inequality combined with easy access to a firearm:

o Discrimination
o Income inequality
o Poverty
o Underfunded public housing
o Under-resourced public services
o Under-performing schools
o Lack of opportunity and perceptions of hopelessness
o Easy access to firearms by high-risk people

Sources:

Jacoby SF, et al. (2018). The enduring impact of historical and structural racism on urban violence in Philadelphia. Social science & medicine.

Rowhani-Rahbar A, et al. (2019). Income inequality and firearm homicide in the US: a county-level cohort study. Injury prevention.

Kennedy BP, et al. (1998). Social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime. Social science & medicine.

US Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2000). In the crossfire: The impact of gun violence on public housing communities.

Bieler S, Kijakazi K, La Vigne N, Vinik N, & Overton S. (2016). Engaging communities in reducing gun violence. Urban Institute.

DuRant RH, et al. (1994). Factors associated with the use of violence among urban black adolescents. American journal of public health.

"Guns not only permit violence, they can stimulate it as well. The finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger may also be pulling the finger."

– Leonard Berkowitz, American social psychologist best known for his research on altruism and human aggression