Has the Decline of Violence Reversed since The Better Angels of Our Nature was Written?

Steven Pinker

Many journalists, citing recent violence in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, and Ukraine, have asked me whether the decline of violence has gone into reverse since The Better Angels of Our Nature was written. The question betrays the same statistical misconceptions that led me to write Better Angels in the first place. People always think that violence has increased because they reason from memorable examples rather than from global data. If at any time you cherry-pick the most violent place in the world, then you’ll discover that yes, it’s violent. That has nothing to do with overall rates or trends in violence. The basic problem is that journalism is a systematically misleading way to understand the world. News is about things that happen, not about things that don’t happen. You never see a reporter standing on the streets of Angola, Sri Lanka, or Vietnam saying “I’m here reporting that a war has not broken out today.” It’s only by looking at data on the world as a whole that you get an accurate picture of the trends. Objectively, there has indeed been an uptick in war deaths in 2013 compared to 2012 (it’s too early to have data for 2014), mostly due to the war in Syria. But the overall level of deaths is still far below those of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when the world was a far more dangerous place. Even putting aside the obvious examples (such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the 3-million-death war in Vietnam), one sees that the conflicts of today are far less damaging than those of past decades. For instance, the 1980s saw an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq that killed more than half a million people and threatened to block the flow of oil from the Persian gulf, which would have brought the world economy to a standstill. A decade before, the Yom Kippur War killed 12,000 people (six time as many as died in Gaza in 2014), threatened the existence of nuclear-armed Israel, and led Richard Nixon to put American nuclear forces on a higher level of alert. Here are some graphs (constructed with the help of Brian Atwood) which show the most recent available data on several categories of violence covered in Better Angels. The data analyses in the book were closed in September 2010, and thus included statistics no later than the preceding year, 2009. In all the graphs below I show that cutoff with a vertical red line.

War Let’s beginvolvingConflict number wand 37. Cconflicts more thaearly 1992013, wh

gin with the g a governmData Prograwhich] has rCompared to were activean 1,000 live90s to sevenhich was two

number of sment which kam (June, 20remained reo the period, armed con

es, defined a in 2013.” T

o more than

state-based kills at least 2014), “In 201elatively stabd right after tnflicts have das wars, haveThey also not

the previou

armed conf25 people a 13, there weble over the the end of tdeclined by e declined bte that “ther

us year.” He

flicts (name year). Acco

ere 33 active past ten yeahe Cold Waalmost 40 p

by more thanre were six pre are the da

ly, organizedrding to the conflicts in

ars, fluctuatir, where mo

percent. Conn 50 percentpeace agreemata:

d violence e Uppsala the world. …ng between

ore than 50 nflicts claimit, from 15 inments signe

…[a 31

ing n the ed in

As I menwill be evrate still

ntioned, the ven higher indoes not co

number of bn 2014, mos

ome anywhe

battle deathstly becausere close to t

s in these coe of the confthe rate of d

onflicts did flicts in Syriaeath in past

increase in a and Iraq. Bt decades:

2013, and liBut the glob

ikely al

Genocide Most defUppsala incidentsincludes and war is barely extensivethe 1994

e

finitions of “ Conflict Das in which o anything thcrimes. Sinc noticeable ce graphs on peak (from

“genocide” ta Project hrganized armat anyone wce 2009 thercompared to the history Rwanda) is

are too vaguas a categormed forces

would want tre has been o the declineof genocide

s a tiny fract

ue and politry called “Onkill substantto call a gen an uptick ine since 1989

e in Better Anion of the le

icized to allone-Sided Viotial numberocide, toget

n deaths from9, when the ngels (pp. 33evels from th

ow objectiveolence” whics of unarmether with othm one-sided dataset beg38 and 340) he preceding

e counts. Thch includes ed civilians; her atrocitied violence wgins. More show that eg decades.

he all this es which

even

Homicid Battle demore peo500,000 the homof a mucabout 50

e

eaths, in anyople are killehomicides wicide rate ha

ch larger dec0 homicides/

y case, are a ed in homicworldwide, cas continuedcline of hom/100,000/ye

misleading cides than incompared tod the Great C

micide in the ear. Here are

indicator ofn wars. (In 2o 38,000 verCrime Decli West since e the recent

f worldwide 012, for exa

rified battle dne that bega the Middle data for the

violence, bemple, there deaths.) In man in the 19 Ages, when

e US:

ecause man were aboutmost countr

990s, itself pn the rate wa

y t ries art

as

And for C

Canada:

The UK h

has shown aa random wi

iggle which has not unddone its decade-plus-lonng decline:

Homicid

de worldwidee has also d

eclined:

Even theSince Besome othas a who

More imthe hom

parts of thetter Angels wher parts of

ole, which sh

portantly, wicide rate in

e world withwas publishe Mexico. Hehow no over

when we zoo Mexico of a

relatively hed, much haere are the drall increase

om out, we sa few decade

igh homicidas been madata from the since 2009:

see that evenes before:

de rates havede of the hore past coupl

n this local p

e to be put irrific violencle of decade

peak is less

n perspectivce in Juarez es for the co

than a third

ve. and untry

d of

Rape AccordinepidemicFBI data

In fact thmethods Worldwidyear, “ThThursdayissue. ‘WPower, Uunusuallincludingto end thRepublica special

ng to anothec, particular show that r

he decline iss are used; s

de data on she United Nay the last few

We’re crushinUnited States

y positive teg a U.N. deche use of rapc of Congo P adviser on

er media-drivly on collegerates of rape

probably evsee Better An

sexual violenations’ top aw years haveng it on the s ambassaderms about tclaration laspe in conflicPresident Jos sexual viole

ven moral pe campusese in the US h

ven more drngels p. 402.

nce do not eadviser on se seen ‘a ponormative for to the Unthe issue. Bt year that 1t, a similar dseph Kabila’ence for the

panic, the Un. But this is

have continu

ramatic whe

exist, but accsexual violenlitical mome

front, kind onited Nationangura cata40 memberdeclaration s announceconflict-dest

nited States based on bued to declin

en more spe

cording to ance in conflicentum that

of unexpectens. … Bangualogued highr states havelast year by

ement in Octabilized ea

is in the miogus statistne:

cific victimiz

a report releact, Zainab Bis unpreceddly,’ agreed

ura and Powh points of pe since signe the G8, andctober that hstern Africa

iddle of a ratics; the late

zation surve

ased earlier Bangura, saiddented’ on th Samantha

wer spoke in progress, ed committi

d Democratihe would appn

pe st

ey

this d he

ing c point

region….[According to Bangura,] ‘The foundation laid by various Security Council resolutions gave us the weapon and the opportunity to engage leaders… I think we’ve broken the backbone of it.’”

Violence Against Children An equally virulent panic surrounds violence against children, such as bullying, cyberbullying, and sexual victimization. But according to a 2014 literature review by David Finkelhor and his colleagues, “Of 50 trends in exposure examined, there were 27 significant declines and no significant increases between 2003 and 2011. Declines were particularly large for assault victimization, bullying, and sexual victimization. There were also significant declines in the perpetration of violence and property crime. For the recession period between 2008 and 2011, there were 11 significant declines and no increases for 50 specific trends examined. Dating violence declined, as did one form of sexual victimization and some forms of indirect exposure.” The highly publicized 2012 Sandy Hook massacre has convinced many people that schools are becoming increasingly unsafe. Not true. According to a recent summary of a 2013 joint survey by the Departments of Justice and Education: “•Since 1992, the rate of "victimization," which includes violent crimes such as assault and rape as well as non-violent crimes such as robbery, pursesnatching and pickpocketing, has plummeted, from 181.5 incidents per 1,000 students to 49.2 per 1,000 in 2011, the latest complete year for which statistics are available. •Overall, the number of reported "non-fatal victimizations" has dropped by 71%, from 4.3 million in 1992 to 1.2 million in 2011. •During the 2009-2010 school year, researchers found 1,396 homicides with victims ages 5 to 18. Of those, only 19 took place at school. During the 2010 calendar year, only three of the reported 1,456 youth suicides took place at school. •Though rare, homicides, suicides and deaths involving intervention by police at school or on the way to or from school dropped 46%, from 57 in the 1992-1993 school year to 31 in the 2010-2011 school year. Over 19 years, researchers counted 863 deaths, or about 45 per year.”

Democra Accordindata–demsince 200

acy

ng to anothemocracy is i09, and the

er popular mn retreat. Thnumber of d

meme—agaihe data say odemocracies

n based on otherwise. Ts has increa

a few exampThe number sed:

ples rather t of autocrac

than global cies has falleen

Capital P Finally, ctwo and of the woexecution

Punishment

capital punisthree nation

orld’s countns.

shment contns have abories have th

tinues its lolished the de death pen

ng-term swaeath penaltyalty and onl

an song. In y every year, ly about a te

the past 35 and today oenth actually

years, betweonly about ay carry out

een fifth

Even in tthe death

As has th

If current

the United Sh penalty ha

he national r

t trends con

States, an ouas declined s

rate of execu

ntinue. the d

utlier amongsince the pu

utions:

death penalty

g Western deblication of

y will vanish

emocracies,f Better Ange

h from the fa

, the numbeels:

ace of the ea

er of states w

arth by 2026

with

6.

Concluding Remarks If you base your beliefs about the state of the world on what you read in the news, your beliefs will be incorrect. This is not because of a conspiracy among journalists to hide or distort the truth. It’s because of an interaction between the nature of news—it’s about things that happen, particularly bad things—and the nature of human cognition. Forty years ago Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that people base their estimates of risk on how easily they can recall examples from memory. As long as rates of violence have not fallen to zero, the news media will always have examples of violence to serve us. It’s only by (1) counting the violent incidents, (2) scaling them by the number of opportunities for violence to occur, and (3) seeing how this ratio changes over time that one can get an objective sense of trends in violence. When one does this, one sees that global trends since the completion of The Better Angels of Our Nature show no reversal of the historical decline of violence, and in every case except the effects of the war in Syria, a continuation of the decline.