Is It a Fight or Are They Just Drunk? Attributions about Drunken Behaviour in a Hypothetical Male‐to‐Male Aggression Scenario1

Abstract

Objective. This paper examines the excuse‐value of alcohol in a hypothetical provoked male‐to‐male violence scenario. There are two main questions. Does intoxication result in decreased blame? Does intoxication lessen the propensity to call the police? 1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 29th annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium, Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol, in Krakow, Poland June 2003. Thanks to Robin Room for his guidance throughout the project and his comments on the paper. Funding for the project was provided by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS), and Sandra Bullock was supported by a Post‐doctoral Stipend from the Swedish Public Health Institute (FHI). Methods. 1004 random digit dialing (RDD) quantitative telephone surveys were completed with Swedes aged 16–25. The response rate was 73.8%. Besides the aggressor's intoxication, severity of the outcome, the victim's intoxication and the respondent's hypothetical relationship to the aggressor or to the victim were also randomly manipulated. Whether the police should be called and the attribution of blame to the aggressor have been analysed using ANOVA in SAS. Results. Analyses were stratified by sex. For male respondents, the aggressor's intoxication interacted (four‐way) with all the manipulated variables in predicting the attribution of blame. In the more severe act, intoxication tended to reduce blame; the least amount of blame was assigned when both the aggressor and the victim were intoxicated. For female respondents, the aggressor's intoxication was involved in a three‐way interaction. For them also, intoxication decreases the blame for the severe acts but not for the less severe acts. The aggressor's intoxication had very little effect on whether the police should be called or not. Discussion. Intoxication provides some excuse from blame but only for certain acts and under certain circumstances. It also changes the way people perceive acts of violence.