The Challenges in Explaining Mass Shootings

A classic question in social psychology is to ask why there is wrongdoing in society. A classic error or bias is to respond very quickly that there is something wrong with the wrongdoer and to look no further. Ignoring the possibility of situational or societal causes and focusing only on the characteristics of the wrongdoer falls under the “fundamental attribution error” or FAE, not that the wrongdoer should ever be excused or ignored (Stalder, 2018).

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In the two recent mass shootings in the U.S., at least one of which appears to be a hate crime, there indeed must be something wrong or deranged or evil in the perpetrator. The person who pulled the trigger is to blame and needs to be brought to justice. But to limit our explanation to the shooter being “crazy” or “sick” while denying other potential causes, within only a few hours after the shooting, would fit the FAE. Unfortunately, some political figures follow this explanatory path (Gittleson & Doom, 2019).

It would also be unjustified to say it’s all about the guns. Nor can we point the finger solely at a president whose talking points may overlap with the views of an alleged shooter. With El Paso and Dayton, it’s too early to say much with certainty—law enforcement is still gathering information.

But to avoid the classic bias in explaining a mass shooting, it’s not enough to wait for further information. To avoid the FAE, we need to be open to the possibility that the cause is all of the above: mental health, guns, rhetoric, culture, and who knows what other specific circumstances in the life of the shooter.

No particular cause excuses murder, but humans and society are complicated enough that multiple causes are very likely. Prematurely excluding possible causes may reduce our chances of stopping the next tragedy.

I know that being open to possibilities can be difficult after violence hurts us or those we care about. The anguish and anger press us to point the finger quickly and decisively. Sometimes it’s about pointing the finger away from ourselves if we somehow feel responsible because of our past actions or inaction. More often, it’s about restoring a sense of justice or control. It’s about trying to feel less anguish and anger.

For many of us, being told there could be situational factors behind an evil act that affected us only makes us angrier as if we’re being told that we cannot blame the wrongdoer (Newman & Bakina, 2009). But explaining is not excusing. The wrongdoer can be deranged and evil in addition to being subject to situational and societal forces.

We will probably never know for sure all the causes behind the recent mass shootings, but researchers have long been accumulating evidence of what can cause aggression and violence in general. I discuss two high-profile possibilities.

Guns

A common immediate response to mass shootings by many Americans is to say guns don’t cause violence—people with mental health problems cause violence. Aside from the either-or problem here, because the cause can certainly be both guns and mental health, there is ample evidence that guns cause aggression.

It’s more than the physics of having and shooting a gun. It turns out that the mere presence of guns can prime hostile thoughts, which can both cause aggressive acts and color our perceptions of others’ behavior so that we take offense and retaliate more easily (Anderson et al., 1998; Berkowitz & LePage, 1967). The common phrase in this research is that the trigger can pull the finger.

As I tell my students, however, the reality that the presence of guns causes aggression does not automatically call for more gun-control legislation. It’s apples and oranges. The right to bear arms is a constitutional issue regardless of the physics or neurophysics of guns. That said, it would be fair to use the science to inform legislative decisions, especially when the constitutional reach of the amendment is debated among judges, and especially when more and more mass shootings plague a society.

Rhetoric

Can language influence thoughts and behavior? Of course. Can Trump’s language cause intergroup violence? I don’t know. Despite the growing criticism of Trump in this regard, that connection is hard to prove. But here’s some of what we know about the effects of word choices.

A classic study asked participants how fast two cars were going when they “smashed” versus “hit” into each other. The word “smashed” caused higher speed estimates and stronger memories of broken glass (though there was no broken glass). Leading questions can affect our perceptions and memory. Other research has shown that describing someone’s behavior with adjectives or nouns versus verbs can increase the FAE, as in “John is unintelligent” or “John is a dummy” versus “John failed the course” (Stalder, 2018).

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More relevant to hate crimes, researchers have shown that dehumanizing or biased language regarding an outgroup can predict, cause, or be used to justify not only negative stereotypes but also negative behaviors toward that group (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014; Goff et al., 2008; Vaes et al., 2019). These behaviors can include assigning a stronger punishment for a perceived crime and acting more aggressively. For whites, outgroups can include blacks and Mexicans. For Christians, an outgroup is Muslims. For men, the outgroup is women. For the middle or upper class, the outgroup is the poor.

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Dehumanizing language can take many forms, including referring to the outgroup in animal terms such as “vermin,” “dogs,” “pigs,” or “animals.” To say “no human being would want to live there” would also count. Although Trump uses some of the classic examples of dehumanizing language, we’ll probably never know whether those words contributed to a particular mass shooting. But rhetoric is a possible contributing factor, and researchers in this area make recommendations to politicians or “newsmakers” to use more neutral language (Vaes et al., 2019).

In Sum

It’s tempting to put 100 percent of the cause on the shooter, but there’s too much evidence for other possibilities, not in place of the shooter but in addition. The shooter needs to be brought to justice. In the long term, however, being open to multiple causes including guns and dehumanizing rhetoric should increase our ability to reduce intergroup violence in society.