Superbowl and Spousal Abuse
Published by Joel October 25th, 2006.Numbers from some Berkeley economists showing a correlation between Super Bowl Sunday and spousal assault. No analysis paper yet, but in another paper from the same group discussing lowered violence acts when watching violent movies they point to lowered consumption of alcohol decreasing assault rates; during the Super Bowl, plenty of people like to get way sauced. [Berkeley.edu]
This has been pretty widely debunked.
Here’s the snopes page:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/superbowl.asp
Two things: This is newer data, it seems, and they aren’t saying that Super Bowl Sunday is the most violent day of the year, just more violent.
Point taken - it would appear that this is at least an attempt at a scientific approach.
I’d like to see it compared against Christmas and Thanksgiving, though. I would guess (for all that’s worth) that the distraction of the Superbowl would result in less violence than the forced interaction of, say, a family meal.
I guess my thought is that an increase in people at home would result in more violence regardless of the occasion; very few people beat their spouse at the mall.
There’s a tendency among certain groups to demonize football / sports in general claiming they angry up the blood of dumb men who can’t control their testosterone fueled rages. Not that you are doing that, of course.
If anything this will help debunk that idea—if they can prove that increased alcohol consumption is what causes the increased violence. (And you’d think in houses that drink during the holidays you’d see a similar uptick.)
I have first hand experience in women’s shelters. More volunteers are needed and the lines are much busier during the weekend of Superbowl Sunday and the following week. It may have to do with alcohol consumption, but gambling seems to be a part of it also. If men lose big, especially when they don’t have the extra to lose on top of drinking it is worse.