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Article Excerpt
The question as to whether alcohol does or does not cause violence has been the subject of great interest for researchers in a broad range of disciplines for a long time (for reviews, see Graham & West 2001, Lenke 1990, Pernanen 1991). There is now much evidence for a positive relationship between changes in total alcohol consumption and the rates of reported violence. This relationship varies both in strength and in nature between different countries or regions (Lenke 1990, Norstrom 1998, Parker & Cartmill 1998, Room & Rossow 2001, Rossow 2001). The relationship between alcohol and aggression has also been studied in the experimental field where a majority of studies report that those who consume alcohol also display more aggressive behavior especially under a condition of provocation (for reviews, see Bushman 1997, Gustafson 1993, Lipsey et al. 1997). However, there are still many questions to be resolved about the nature of the relationship. For example, how much is due to the psychoactive substance and its impact on the brain function and how much to people's expectations about drunken behavior? Graham et al. (1998) identify three important directions in the research about alcohol's impact on violence, research focusing on: 1) individual characteristics and alcohol as a psychoactive substance, 2) the drinking context or situational factors, and 3) cultural contexts and expectations concerning alcohol and intoxication.
The current common opinion is that all of these areas have to be included in understanding the relationship between alcohol and violence. This paper focuses on the last area, the importance of the cultural context. This perspective is largely influenced by a classic study, Drunken Comportment, by MacAndrew and Edgerton (1969). Before the preparation of this book, the conventional wisdom was that alcohol "changed people for the worse" because as a psychoactive substance it had a negative impact on the brain's functions. MacAndrew and Edgerton argued in opposition to this by stating that alcohol did not always change people for the worse; it sometimes did, but certainly not all the time, which would be expected if it was a result of direct pharmacological effect. MacAndrew and Edgerton showed that drunken comportment was different between different cultures, varied within a specific culture from one context to another, and also varied between time periods. Their conclusion was that the effects of alcohol on human behavior were not determined by the psychoactive substance; instead, the effects of alcohol were determined by society. Their explanation was that many societies or cultures established intoxication as a time-out situation, a situation where society created an increased scope for otherwise unacceptable behavior through offering intoxication as a freedom from responsibility. People became involved in violence when they had been drinking because they could get away with it. Afterwards individuals were not seen as deviant--they were still seen as the same person who did something "stupid" just because drunk. On the other hand, MacAndrew and Edgerton also stated that there were norms that could not be changed even for intoxication, something they described as the "within limits clause" (MacAndrew and Edgerton 1969).
Graham et al. have pointed out three conditions that need to be fulfilled if time-out theory is to account for some or all of the relationship between alcohol and violence: 1) individuals need to believe that alcohol is a cause of violence, 2) individuals or society should view a person who behaves violently when intoxicated as less deviant or less blameworthy than a person who is involved in violence without having consumed alcohol and 3) the expected lessening of blame should make an individual who consumes alcohol more prone to behave aggressively (Graham et al. 1998).
Several attempts have been made to test the empirical support for these conditions. It has been shown that people carry a strong belief that alcohol is a cause of violence (for review, see Graham & West 2001). For example, Paglia and Room (1998) found that 75% of their Canadian sample believed alcohol was a cause of violence. However, they also found that people's belief in the link between alcohol and violence was only weakly related to whether they agreed that an intoxicated aggressor was less responsible for his behavior, and in contrast to what they expected, the relationship was in fact negative. There has also been research using quasi-experimental designs where respondents were presented different vignettes, with the aggressor's and the victim's alcohol intake varying as the vignette was presented to different respondents. These studies have not been consistent in their findings. Richardson & Campbell (1980, 1982) found that the perpetrators of wife abuse and rape were considered less to blame for their acts when they were described as drunk compared with when they were described as sober. They also found that the victim was considered more responsible and her character was evaluated less positively when she was drunk compared with when she was sober. Critchlow (1985) found that the intoxication of the perpetrator lessened responsibility and blame, but only for more severe acts. Other studies (assault with a male aggressor and a male or female victim, and assault with a male aggressor and a female victim) have shown that perpetrators, as well as their victims, are blamed more when they are presented as drunk compared with sober (Aramburu & Leigh 1991, Leigh & Aramburu 1994). Aramburu and Leigh (1991) also found that aggression toward a drunken victim was more acceptable than aggression toward a sober victim. They also addressed the question of whether the increased blame for the victim was related to gender violation (women are not supposed to get drunk, and if they violate that norm, it could be a lesser norm violation to hit them), but they found that blame increased with intoxication for both male and female victims. Some later studies have shown even more complex results. Stormo et al. (1997) found that the aggressor's alcohol consumption reduced the attributed responsibility in a date-rape scenario when the aggressor and the victim were equally intoxicated, but increased the responsibility if the victim was more intoxicated than the aggressor. Wild et al. (1998) used five different scenarios: unwanted touching, date rape, assault and rape, vandalism, and assault. Only one main effect of the offender's drinking was found: A drunk offender was blamed more than a relatively sober offender in the unwanted-touching scenario. Wild et al. also found a two-way interaction in the assault vignette where the offender's drinking interacted with criminal history: For offenders without a criminal history, intoxication decreased the perceived blame. In two cases the perpetrators were blamed significantly less when the female victims were drunk compared with when they were relatively sober. There was, however, a moderate indication that the punishments assigned as appropriate were lower for drunken perpetrators in two of the vignettes; this in turn shows that there are differences between the concepts of blameworthiness and appropriate punishment that might be important for the concept of timeout or excuse value. Even though not very consistent, these studies seem to indicate that intoxication might work as an excuse for some behaviors in some contexts, but the evidence for an overall excuse concept is not very strong. There seems to be stronger agreement about the increased blame for drunken victims, and there are indications that the aggressor's blame may depend on the victim's drinking.
The studies discussed so far were concerned with responsibility or blame attributed to other people. The timeout or excuse value is also thought to have meaning for the managing or maintenance of self-identity. For example, McCaghy (1968) has shown that child molesters who attributed their crime to their drinking could thereby admit the act and still maintain their identity as a normal member of society. There are also examples that show how alcohol is used as an excuse even though nothing is said about whether it works or not (no dependent variable used). Rhodes and Cusick (2002) have demonstrated that alcohol is used to retain a rationale of the self for HIV-positive people engaged in unprotected sex. Examples of people's views can also be found in studies that focus on other issues. In a study of criminal homicide in the USA, an offender who had killed his wife's lover stated: "If they were drunk or something, I could see it. I mean, I've done it myself. But when he said they loved each other, well, that did it" (Luckenbill 1977, p. 180). In popular culture, Lang (1983) has shown that alcohol has been described as an excuse in texts of American Blues music. Intoxication also seems to be a common excuse in films and books, but no research has been done in this area. The use of alcohol as an excuse for undesirable behavior does not prove that it leads to more undesirable behavior; on the other hand, it is hard to believe that it is used without meaning, and such meaning could affect the prevalence of those behaviors.
The current research indicates a rather complex situation with some divergent and sometimes apparently contradictory results. As seen before, Paglia and Room (1998) found that people felt that intoxication did not change the responsibility for one's behavior. In addition, some of the vignette studies showed that alcohol not only...
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