(Untitled)

[paleojen]

        In December, a pair of economists published a paper in which they looked for a correlation between violent movies and violent crime. They found one, but it wasn't the one they expected. According to the paper, the connection was inverse. Blockbuster violent movies such as Hannibal led to a decrease in violent crime, and as many as 1,000

Comments

[jonsonite]

That was my first thought--that if it takes a while for exposure to violence to manifest itself, there'd be a significant time-shift between the exposure (movie) and the actual violence. And since 1 movie probably doesn't lead to violence, the cumulative movies over several years wouldn't register as spikes in the data.

The inverse correlation is fascinating, though.

[cuteandfuzzy]

As an aside, when discussing this with a sociologist friend of mine, I learned that the vast majority of violence-in -> violence-out studies are based upon (and use the same tactics as) Bandura's Bobo doll experiments from the 1960's.

[spiralingsnails]

Hmmm, I think I would have 'flunked' this one. When offered a choice between a tea set and a dart gun, I'd use the tea set alright - for target practice!