Societal Violence and Collective Consciousness: Reduction of U.S. Homicide and Urban Violent Crime Rates

SAGE Open

Michael C. Dillbeck¹ 

关键词: crime prevention;    crime statistics;    public safety;    criminology;    criminal justice;    collective behavior;   

DOI  :  10.1177/2158244016637891

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Sage Journals

【 摘 要 】

This research tests the hypothesis that group practice of the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) and TM-Sidhi® program by a group of sufficient size is associated with reduced rates of homicide and violent crime. Data from a prospective quasi-experiment were analyzed using intervention analysis or interrupted time series analysis. Dependent variables are time series of the U.S. monthly homicide rate as well as violent crime rate from a sample of 206 cities. The binary intervention variable is based on the size of the largest U.S. TM-Sidhi group. Intervention effects were analyzed by time series regression using a broken-trend intervention model. As hypothesized, there was a statistically and practically significant shift in trend in the direction of reduced rates for each of the variables beginning with the onset of the intervention period. Diagnostic tests indicate that key statistical assumptions of the analysis are satisfied. Alternative hypotheses are considered for the apparent effect of macro-level social behavioral change without micro-level behavioral interaction.

【 授权许可】

CC BY