Violent Crime Rate Studies in Philosophical Context: A Destructive Testing Approach to Heat and Southern Culture ofViolence Effects

The logic behind the translation of conceptual hypotheses into testable propositions was illustrated with the heat hypothesis, The destructive testing philosophy was introduced and applied, This consists of first showing that a predicted empirical relation exists, then attempting to break that relation. by adding competitor variables. The key question in destructive testing is "How difficult was it to break the relation?'~ This approach was used to analyze the heat effect on violent crime rates (Study I ) and on White violent crime arrest rates (Study 2) in U.S. cities. One competitor variable was the particular focus of analysis: southern culture of violence. The heat hypothesis was supported by highly significant correlations between the warmth of a city and its violence rate. This heat effect survived multiple destructive tests. Some support for the southern culture effect was also found, but this effect was more easily broken.