Psychology of Fear, Crime and the Media

International Perspectives

Derek Chadee

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138018327
• eBook ISBN: 9781317700593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The media continue to have a significant persuasive influence on the public perception of crime, even when the information presented is not reflective of the crime rate or actual crime itself. There have been numerous theoretical studies on fear of crime in the media, but few have considered this from a social psychological perspective. As new media outlets emerge and public dependence on them increases, the need for such awareness has never been greater. This volume lays the foundation for understanding fear of crime from a social psychological perspective in a way that has not yet been systematically presented to the academic world.

This volume brings together an international team of experts and scholars to assess the role of fear and the media in everyday life. Chapters take a multidisciplinary approach to psychology, sociology and criminology and explore such topics as dual process theory, construal level theory, public fascination with gangs, and other contemporary issues.

Section 1

1 Fear of Crime as a ‘Sponge’

Toward a More Dynamic Understanding of the Relationship Between Generalized Social Attitudes and Fear of Crime

Stefaan Pleysier and Diederik Cops

This contribution departs from a pivotal distinction in fear of crime research between a ‘subjective’ evaluation of crime and the ‘objective’ risk one has to be confronted with crime (Vanderveen, 2004). The former constitutes a feeling or emotion experienced and evaluated by an individual and is generally referred to as fear of crime or ‘feelings of unsafety.’ The latter refers to an ‘objective’ assessment of a situation of threat and potential crime ‘out there,’ which has been captured by concepts as the ‘risk of criminal victimization.’ If felt or experienced by an individual, this risk of victimization could be one of many possible sources of fear of crime.

This distinction is pivotal since it has dominated, to a large extent, the literature and research on fear of crime. It is the origin of what is in this tradition known as the ‘fear victimization paradox’: individuals and groups that ‘objectively’ run the highest risk of becoming a victim of crime, seem to experience fear of crime to a far lesser extent and vice versa. This apparent paradox disembogued in the rationality debate where one could largely distinguish two different, opposite positions: a rationalistic and a symbolic point of view (Elchardus, De Groof, & Smits, 2008; Jackson, 2004). The rationalistic position departs from the individual as a rational being, also in its fear: It is then conceived as a ‘paradox’ if people with a low ‘objective’ chance of becoming the victim of a crime, feel more insecure and experience more fear of crime in comparison to those who run a larger risk of victimization. In a symbolic approach the ‘objective’ risk of crime, on one hand, and the subjective experience as fear of crime, on the other hand, are not necessarily disconnected but are intertwined in a complex and not-straightforward manner. From a symbolic point of view the relation between and accordance with the objective and subjective component in our distinction is not a ‘paradox’ since fear—the subjective component—is an emotion and therefore by definition ‘irrational.’

In this contribution we build on the symbolic position and aim to integrate social psychological concepts related to the individual’s identity and evaluation of his position in an increasingly complex society, to enhance our understanding of the fear of crime concept. The study is in that perspective, inspired both by one of the first contributions to the research tradition (Furstenberg, 1971) and by more recent reflections that describe fear of crime as a ‘sponge,’ capable of “absorbing all sorts of anxieties about related issues of deteriorating moral fabric, from family to community to society” (Jackson, 2006, p. 261). Furthermore, we implicitly build on insights from developmental and social psychology and argue that the absorbing qualities of the fear of crime sponge, relates to a more general developmental process that can be situated in, and is in need of a focus on, adolescence.

Using data from the third edition of the Flemish Youth Monitor (2013), a cross-sectional and large-scale survey in a representative sample of Flemish youth, we aim to offer an empirical base for the validity of our theoretical presumptions, that is, the idea of fear of crime as a sponge. More specifically, multiple linear regression analyses are conducted on a group of adolescents (14–18 years) and a group of young adults (19–24 years) to assess the relationship between generalized social attitudes and fear of crime, with the expectation that, first, these generalized social attitudes will add to a more traditional sociodemographic approach toward explaining fear of crime and, second, the power of the generalized social attitudes will be stronger in the young adults group than in the adolescents group. In the end, this contribution aims to demonstrate that adding a social psychological and more dynamic perspective to fear of crime research, with a specific focus on the period of adolescence, might broaden our knowledge and insight in the way fear of crime as an expressive emotion is formed and developed throughout the life course.

On the Origin of Fear of Crime

Although in Inventing Fear of Crime, Murray Lee (2007) tries to establish a ‘selective prehistory’ of the concept of fear of crime, the origin of the research tradition is generally situated early and midway the 1960s. The empirical discovery of what was then called a ‘widespread public anxiety about crime’ emerged from the first crime and victim surveys that were developed around that time in the United States. In fact, it is not a coincidence that both the origin of the research on fear of crime and the first large-scale crime and victim surveys can be situated in the 1960s. This era can be considered the heyday of (neo)positivism, in general; more specifically, social scientists professed an unconditional belief in survey research and large-scale population studies. The crime and victim surveys were developed and piloted in that period as a valid alternative to flawed crime statistics and the ‘dark number’ problem in criminological research. Although much more is to be said on the origin and genesis of the fear of crime tradition, what is important in light of this contribution is the close connection between fear of crime research and the dominant, policy-oriented instruments to do so (i.e., large-scale crime and victim surveys). This symbiosis not only triggered and influenced the origin and genesis of fear of crime research in those early days but, to a large extent, also determined the evolution of this research tradition.

Fear of crime research, originated at the crossroads of a political urge to be informed and the naïve believe that victim surveys offered a straightforward answer to that quest, can, to a certain extent, be characterized as a rather conservative research tradition (Lee, 2007; Pleysier, 2010). Indicative of this conservatism is, first of all, the persistent critique of the operationalization and instruments used to measure the fear of crime concept. It is claimed that fear of crime is actually “a product of the way it has been researched rather than the way it is” (Farrall, Bannister, Ditton, & Gilchrist, 1997, p. 658; Ditton, Bannister, Gilchrist, & Farrall, 1999). For a considerable period of the research tradition, what is understood as fear of crime is captured by the answers on the ‘standard’ item or a variant of the question, “How safe do you feel or would you feel being alone in your neighborhood at night?” Obviously, instruments like this can only offer a poor representation of what fear of crime is. They are not able to capture the complexity and dimensionality of the fear of crime concept, which is, “like other emotions…, difficult to define and hard to measure” (Fattah, 1993, p. 45).

A second related indication of the conservative nature of much of fear-of-crime tradition is the poor status of etiological research on fear of crime. As most studies in the early days of fear of crime research used data from large-scale victim surveys, more attention is given to “who is afraid rather than why they are afraid” (Fattah, 1993, p. 47). Victim surveys tend to focus first of all on victimization and the profiles of those who become victim of a number of crimes. Since the empirical discovery of that ‘widespread anxiety about crime’ there was also an interest in fear of crime and the profiles of those who are fearful, but victim surveys, and therefore research, lacked theoretically interesting explanations on why people are afraid. Victim surveys usually did not go beyond a traditional and limited set of covariates.

The Rationality Debate

The focus in research on ‘who’ is afraid rather than ‘why’ people are afraid fed into the aforementioned rationality debate. Victim surveys offered information on both fear of crime and victimization, which could be categorized into groups of individuals based on the background variables and covariates that were also questioned in the survey. It led to questions about whether the fear of crime in certain categories or groups was balanced in a ‘reasonable’ or ‘appropriate’ way with the risk those groups ran to become the victim of a crime. The idea of a proper balance between ‘risk’ and fear of crime was already pronounced in what is generally considered as the first fear of crime contribution. Furstenberg (1971, p. 602) argued in that article that “many people who had little reason to be afraid of criminal attack worried a great deal about crime.”

This line of argument is known in the fear of crime research tradition as the ‘fear victimization paradox’: Those individuals and groups that ‘objectively’ speak have the lowest risk of become the victim of a crime reported the highest levels of fear of crime and vice versa. To be more precise, elderly people and women objectively run less risk of becoming the victim of a crime compared to young people and men but, nevertheless, express higher levels of fear of crime, whereas young people and especially young men report the lowest levels of fear. However, it is important to note that the relation between age and fear of crime—and, more in particular, the assumed positive relation between both variables, with fear linearly increasing with age—has been questioned by several authors (e.g., LaGrange & Ferraro, 1989; Chadee & Ditton, 2003; Cops, 2012; Greve, 2004). Growing awareness about the concept of fear of crime and problems relating to its operationalization has shown that this age–fear relation is to a large extent dependent of the instrument used to measure fear of crime. More specifically, this relation is only found (albeit still in a relatively modest manner) with regard to the behavioral component of fear of crime (Greve, 2004). However, this behavior is most often not driven by fear-related motivations but is merely “symptomatic of age-related changes in lifestyle” (Greve, 1998, p. 293). In other words, the paradoxical character of the age-fear of crime relation is found to be less realistic as the gender–fear relationship, which has been observed in almost all studies on the topic, irrespective of the instrument used to measure fear of crime (Ditton & Farrall, 2000).

Surrounding this ‘fear victimization paradox’ and the rationality debate, two positions can be distinguished—a rationalistic and a symbolic approach (Elchardus et al., 2008). In a way, both approaches also represent different eras in the fear of crime research tradition. The rationalistic paradigm is to a large extent the result of the early-day, neopositivist focus on ‘who’ is and ‘what groups’ are afraid of crime. In a rationalistic approach, individuals are also supposed to be rational in their fears. Fear of crime is then considered as an individual, rational (and more or less correct) estimate of the risk and consequences of becoming a victim of crime (Elchardus et al., 2008, p. 454; Killias & Clerici, 2000). The symbolic paradigm is in a way indicative for a more recent theoretically driven search for explanations as to ‘why’ some individuals are more afraid than others. Here, the ‘fear-victimization paradox’ is not a paradox per se, as it does not imply a ‘one-on-one’ correspondence between the risk of victimization and fear of crime. From this perspective, fear of crime is more of a symbolic sublimation of a complex concatenation of factors, combining experiences of risk and vulnerability with a broader array of expressions related to “ill health, economic uncertainty, feelings of anomie or pessimistic feelings about the future, sudden social change, general urban unrest, and ontological insecurity” (Elchardus et al., 2008, p. 455). Again, and rather ironically, this idea was also set out in what is said to be the first fear of crime contribution: Furstenberg (1971, p. 601) explained the ‘widespread public anxiety about crime’ that was discovered toward the end of the 1960s as a “largely irrational reaction to the rapid social change that has taken place during the past decade”. Behind the concern about crime was, according to Furstenberg, the “resentment of social change and resistance to further alterations in the status quo” (Furstenberg, 1971, p. 601; Ditton & Farrall, 2000, p. xv; Hale, 1996, p. 120).

The rational-versus-symbolic divide aligns with the distinction Jackson (2004, 2006) set out earlier between ‘experiential’ and ‘expressive’ fear. The former component refers to everyday experiences of anxiety about people’s risk of victimization and perception of vulnerability, while in the latter component, fear of crime is seen as the confrontation with and expression of more vague and distant insecurities surrounding life in a late modern society (Hollway & Jefferson, 1997; Jackson, 2004, 2006). More specific, Jackson (2004, 2006, p. 261) acclaims that fear of crime questions in crime surveys not only tap into specific experiences of fear or worry about crime but also function to some extent as a sponge for broader and more abstract societal anxieties. According to Jackson (2004, p. 950), fear of crime is then “a symbolic expression of vague and intractable insecurities in a liquid modernity, related to one’s neighborhood, its social make-up and status, its place in the world, and the sense that problems from outside were creeping in”(Adams & Serpe, 2000; Hollway & Jefferson, 1997; Jackson, 2004).

Asking respondents about their fear of crime in a survey offers them the opportunity to report on concrete episodes of fear of criminal victimization but is also an outlet for a broader array of feelings and emotions that are not directly anchored to specific, potential fearful situations. “Fear of crime may thus be as much about judgments of actual criminal threat as it is about judgments of a range of things seen as threatening to social order” (Jackson, 2009, p. 156). In their qualitative case study, Hollway and Jefferson (1997) define fear of crime as a coat hanger for a growing existential uncertainty individuals have to cope with in our liquid society (Bauman, 2000; Mosconi & Padovan, 2004). They concluded that fear of crime, and even fear of a specific type of crime such as burglary, was, to a certain extent, “an unconscious displacement of other fears which are far more intractable and do not display the modern characteristics of knowability and decisionability (or actionability) which add up to the belief in ones capacity to control the external world” (Hollway & Jefferson, 1997, p. 263).

A small number of quantitative studies equally stressed the significance of a symbolic approach to fear of crime. According to Jackson (2004), the study of Dowds and Ahrendt (1995) based on the 1995 British Social Attitudes survey, was one of the first to explore the ‘sponge’ idea: Fear of crime and feelings of unsafety when walking alone after dark were, indeed, associated with “a strikingly variable set of social and political attitudes” (Jackson, 2004, p. 950). Farrall, Jackson, and Gray (2009) continued on the distinction between the experiential and expressive component of fear of crime, as Jackson (2004) set out, and established both on the basis of qualitative and quantitative research that “different...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Notes on Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index