The Duck of Minerva

Causation, Correlation, Aggression, and Political Rhetoric

by Charli Carpenter

10 January 2011, 1345 EST

John Sides at the Monkey Cage weighs in with some social science on the relationship between militant metaphors in political speech and individuals’ willingness to engage in actual political violence against government officials. The findings he cites: an experimental study has shown there seems to be no effect on the overall population of exposure to “fighting words” in political ads, but there is an effect on people with aggressive tendencies. Moreover:

This conditional relationship — between seeing violent ads and a predisposition to aggression — appears stronger among those under the age of 40 (vs. those older), men (vs. women), and Democrats (vs. Republicans).

But his real point is that we should be cautious of inferring from this or any wider probabilistic data causation regarding a specific event:

To prove that vitriol causes any particular act of violence, we cannot speak about “atmosphere.” We need to be able to demonstrate that vitriolic messages were actually heard and believed by the perpetrators of violence. That is a far harder thing to do. But absent such evidence, we are merely waving our hands at causation and preferring instead to treat the mere existence of vitriol and the mere existence of violence as implying some relationship between the two.

Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights
Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.

3 Comments

  1. dnexon
    dnexon on 10 January 2011 at 14.27 EST

    I'm generally skeptical of a causal link, but John is wrong to argue that “To prove that vitriol causes any particular act of violence, we cannot speak about “atmosphere.” We need to be able to demonstrate that vitriolic messages were actually heard and believed by the perpetrators of violence.” One of the most commonly articulated (and, in my view, most likely) causal linkages between extremist rhetoric and political violence is that perpetrators come to believe that the “revolution is imminent,” i.e., that the population is ready to explode if they can simply be nudged by acts of violence. They don't need to hear any particular vitriolic messages, much less interpret them as literal incitements, to reach this conclusion.

  2. Jon Western
    Jon Western on 10 January 2011 at 15.23 EST

    I agree with Dan that John Side's specificty of causality for a particular event is too limiting.  The interaction of political discourse and political violence is complex, but clearly the “atmosphere” does influence behavior (even specific behavior).  Much of the work from psychology, social-psychology, sociology, and other disciplines on the causes of perpetrator violence, the relationship of propaganda to political action, and historical cases of political manipulation of nationalism reveal that escalation of politial vitriol over time influences conceptions of both consent and resistance.  Individuals and groups are motivated by various predispositions and information — and the information can come in many and disparate forms to create conditions/motivations for acts of poltical violence. 

  3. Bill Petti
    Bill Petti on 11 January 2011 at 17.49 EST

    But couldn't we just as easily argue that extremists can find such a signal in anything?  By definition, these people are extreme and, in some cases, mentally unstable.  They will be interpreting what they hear and viewing it through their own, biased lens.  Maybe the atmosphere makes this more likely, maybe it doesn't.  It's far from clear.  It's one thing to make threats and say things that one normally wouldn't because the atmosphere makes it seem legitimate or possible–it's another to take violent action as a result.  I think the latter is harder to prove.