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Updated: Sep 2, 2025
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The Resident-intruder Paradigm: A Standardized Test for Aggression, Violence and Social Stress
Published on: July 4, 2013
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When and where does violence beget violence?
Yinzhi Shen1, Patrick Sharkey2
1Institute for Traffic Safety Management & Research, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University at Albany, NY 12205, United States of America.
Preventive Medicine
|August 6, 2022
Summary
Gun violence does not consistently lead to more violence the following week. However, during sharp increases in gun violence, recent shootings do causally increase future gun violence.
Area of Science:
- Criminology
- Epidemiology
- Public Health
Background:
- Gun violence is often conceptualized as an epidemic.
- Limited quantitative evidence exists on whether violence begets future violence.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the causal relationship between shootings at week t and week t+1.
- To determine if this relationship varies across different urban contexts and time periods.
Main Methods:
- Utilized an instrumental variable approach using weather data to instrument for weekly shootings.
- Analyzed data from 98 of the 100 largest U.S. cities between 2014 and 2020.
Main Results:
- Overall, shootings in a given week had a null or negative effect on shootings in the subsequent week.
- A significant positive causal effect was observed during periods of sharp increases in gun violence.
Conclusions:
- The relationship between current and subsequent gun violence is dynamic, not static.
- Findings suggest that interventions may need to be context- and time-specific, particularly during violence surges.
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