Rethinking Social Reactions to Crime: Personal and Altruistic Fear in Family Households

Abstract

Research on fear of crime in the United States has concentrated on personal fear while overlooking the fear that people have for others in their lives—children, spouses, friends—whose safety they value. Sample survey data reveal that altruistic fear (fear for others) has a distinctive structure in family households and is more common and often more intense than personal fear. Many of the everyday precautions practiced by Americans and conventionally assumed to be self‐protective appear to be a consequence of altruistic fear. These and other findings underscore the need to understand fear of crime as a social rather than an individual phenomenon.