Some Implications : Some Effects of Aversive Effects on Violent Crimes

Two other lines of investigation, neither conducted in the university kaboratory, further show how unpleasant conditions can promote violence.

High Temperatures: The first of these studies looked into the effects of high temperatures on violent crimes. As mentioned before, laboratory experiments have shown that subjects tend to be more hostile when they are in an uncomfortable hot room than when they are exposed to pleasant temperatures [ Baron and Bell, 1975, Griffitt and Veitch, 1971, Cited in Baron, 1977 ]. Other researchers have then demosstrated that high temperatures apparantly contributed to the urban riots that tore through the united states in the 1960s [Baron and Rasnberger, 1978, Carlsmith and Anderson, 1979]. Many of the 102 riots occurred between 1967 and 1971 came on unusally hot days.

Craig and Dona anderson (1984) explored teh relationship between daily temperatures and violent crimes. In one of their studies they obtained the maximum daily temperature on each of about 300 days between October 1980 and September 1982 in Houston, Texas and also recorded the number of crimes reported in the city on these days.

Their findings confirmed similar results the Andersons had obtained in another invensitgfation using the data fronm Chicago. There was a positive relationship between daily temperature and the nuumber of aggressive crimes in the city. Figure 12.2 presents the Houston data, Note that the vertical axis shows the number of violent crimes (rape and murder) in a given 60-day period; the horizontal axis refers to the average maximum daily temperature in each of these persionds. Thus, there were 60 days in which the maximum temperature was fairly low, ranging between 40F and 68F with an average maximum of 57.7F and there were approximately 6.3 violent crimes per day during this time. At the other extreme, there were also about 60 days in which the maximum daily temperature was between 92f and 99f with an average maximum of 94.3F . In this hot...