RSSPull the Trigger
May 9th, 2006 | View Comments
Andrew Sullivan posted a link to a New York Times article (Carey, 2006) about a study of guns and their effects on male testosterone and aggression (Klinesmith, Kasser, McAndrew, in press).
The research report on the study is slated to come out in the July 2006 issue of Psychological Science. I’ll review the actual paper when it comes out, but for now, a few notes.
Sullivan comments that “The usual NRA argument is that guns don’t kill people; people kill people. I’ve always been almost-persuaded by this. The missing link is what actually owning or handling a gun does to male psychology.”
Well, kind of. The link is “missing” in the sense that the data is somewhat inconclusive. But it’s not missing in the sense that people haven’t been doing the research.
The seminal paper on guns and aggression was published by Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage in 1967, so we are talking about four decades of research on weapons and aggression, much of which has been used as justification for gun-control policy.
There are legitimate criticisms of the validity of the research and the application to policy, many of which are nicely laid out in this National Review article by Kopel, Gallant, & Eisen (2002). The biggest problem, as I see it, is the ecological validity of lab studies about guns and aggression.
In the case of the Klinesmith, Kasser, & McAndrew study above, there is a huge difference between expressing aggression by spiking someone’s drink with hot sauce–typical adolescent prank stuff–and taking a gun and shooting someone. The social norms governing those two behaviors are vastly different.
In the case of the original Berkowitz & LePage study, there is a huge difference between shocking someone in the context of a psychology experiment and taking a gun and shooting someone. Again, the social norms governing those two behaviors are vastly different.
In interpreting the studies, I would be inclined to take the conservative route and argue that merely seeing or handling a gun is insufficient to turn an aggressive mood into violence in the absence of other factors like direct provocation, drug or alcohol use, or the presence of other people who instigate violence.
However, I think it’s possible and even likely that seeing or handling a gun or another weapon could be one of a critical mass of factors needed to escalate a situation into deadly violence. But is that really enough to base a gun control policy on? I kind of think not.
References
Berkowitz, L. & LePage, A. (1967). Weapons as aggression-eliciting stimuli. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 7(2-1), 202-207.
Carey, B. (2006, May 9). In men, ‘trigger-happy’ may be a hormonal impulse [Electronic version]. New York Times. Retrieved May 9, 2006.
Klinesmith, J., Kasser, T., & McAndrew, F. T. (2006, in press). Guns, testosterone, and aggression: An experimental test of a mediational hypothesis. Psychological Science, 17(7).
Kopel, D., Gallant, P., & Eisen, J. (2002, April 17). No choice: “Weapons-effect” paralysis. National Review Online. Retrieved May 9, 2006.
Yvonne posted this on May 9th, 2006 @ 6:39pm in News/Politics, Psychology/Neuroscience | Permalink to "Pull the Trigger"
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