Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Published Online November 20, 2008
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1161405

Reports

Submitted on June 5, 2008
Accepted on October 31, 2008

The Spreading of Disorder

Kees Keizer 1*, Siegwart Lindenberg 1, Linda Steg 1

1 Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Netherlands.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Kees Keizer , E-mail: K.E.Keizer{at}rug.nl

Imagine that the neighborhood you are living in is covered with graffiti, litter, and unreturned shopping carts. Would this reality cause you to litter more, trespass or even steal? A thesis known as the Broken Windows Theory suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal behavior trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behavior, thus causing the behavior to spread. This may cause neighborhoods to decay and the quality of life of its inhabitants to deteriorate. For a city government this may be a vital policy issue. But does disorder really spread in neighborhoods? So far there has not been strong empirical support, and it is not clear what constitutes "disorder" and what may make it spread. In this article, we generate hypotheses about the spread of disorder and test them in six field experiments. We found that when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate even other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Dissipation and displacement of hotspots in reaction-diffusion models of crime.
M. B. Short, P. J. Brantingham, A. L. Bertozzi, and G. E. Tita (2010)
PNAS 107, 3961-3965
   Abstract »    Full Text »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)