Social Cognition

Violence is an epidemic in the United States and homicide rates are a good measure of violence. Homicide rates in the United States are higher than in the rest of the industrialized world. Homicide rates in the major European countries and Canada range from 1 to 4 per hundred thousand residents (United Nations, 1991); whereas, in the United States the homicide rate is 8.7 per hundred thousand residents (U.S. Dept. of Commerce, 1991). The media improperly portrays violence as exclusively an inner-city African-American problem; however, the white homicide rate alone is 6 per hundred thousand residents (calculated from 1990 Crime in the United States and The 1990 Census of the Population). Homicide is the most common cause of death for both young African-American males and females. Young African American males are 11 times more likely to die from homicide than are young non African-American males. (America