Previous research has treated multiple family homicide, or familicide, as a uniform event. We sought to explore whether subtypes of familicide could be discerned, making use of a decade of Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) coupled with newspaper articles. The resulting 238 cases were analyzed through a two-step cluster analysis, showing that the familicides can be subgrouped into four categories based on the perpetrator's age, relationship between perpetrator and victims, and perpetrator's suicide. The empirically grouped categories were labeled Despondent Husbands, Spousal Revenge, Extended Parricide, and Diffuse Conflict. Familicide is thus a heterogeneous phenomenon and must be viewed in unique terms to appropriately determine prevention strategies.

This paper examines cross-national commonalities and differences in online hate speech content, exposure, and emotional reaction. Using online surveys from 18 to 25 year old respondents in six countries, we find a majority of respondents were exposed to online hate in the preceding three months. Commonalities across countries are the platform where the respondents were exposed and how they arrived at such content. Unique national cultures of hate speech also exist, including the common targets and respondents' emotional reactions. A majority of respondents report feeling angry, sad, or ashamed, but most worrisome may be the substantial numbers who report feelings of hatred or pride after seeing online hate. Given the potential for repeated exposure and the recent increase in hate crimes in the U.S. and Europe, this finding should serve as a reminder of the dangers of online hate and its potential link to offline violence.

This chapter explores how five dimensions of white racial identity are associated with one another and with white Americans’ racial attitudes. Drawing on data from the 2014 General Social Survey Identity Module, we first examine the relationships among five aspects of whites’ racial identities: prominence, salience, private self-regard, public self-regard, and verification. We then examine the implications of these aspects of racial identity for whites’ reported and preferred distance from, stereotypes about, and support for policies designed to benefit black Americans. In so doing, we contribute to the long-standing identity theory project of demonstrating how identities shape other elements of social life, including the construction and maintenance of social inequalities. We also contribute to the growing research literature on “whiteness” and its implications for intergroup relations in the United States.

The Internet, specifically social media, is among the most common settings where young people encounter hate speech. Understanding their attitudes toward the phenomenon is crucial for combatting it because acceptance of such content could contribute to furthering the spread of hate speech as well as ideology contamination. The present study, theoretically grounded in the General Aggression Model (GAM), investigates factors associated with online hate acceptance among young adults. We collected survey data from participants aged 18–26 from six countries: Finland (n = 483), France (n = 907), Poland (n = 738), Spain (n = 739), the United Kingdom (n = 959), and the United States (n = 1052). Results based on linear regression modeling showed that acceptance of online hate was strongly associated with acceptance of violence in all samples. In addition, participants who admitted to producing online hate reported higher levels of acceptance of it. Moreover, association with social dominance orientation was found in most of the samples. Other sample-specific significant factors included participants’ experiences with the Internet and online hate, as well as empathy and institutional trust levels. Significant differences in online hate acceptance levels and the strength of its connections to individual factors were found between the countries. These results provide important insights into the phenomenon, demonstrating that online hate acceptance is part of a larger belief system and is influenced by cultural background, and, therefore, it cannot be analyzed or combatted in isolation from these factors.

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This manuscript lays the groundwork for considering racial threat as a collective emotion. Although sociologists regularly study racial threat, a disconnect exists between Blumer’s theoretical framework (1958) and modern empirical measurement. Research has largely measured racial threat as perceptions of competition or increases in racism. Neither, however, squarely fits the symbolic interactionist framework that Blumer championed. This manuscript frames racial threat as an affective group response that is generated through sustained interaction with social groups and group representations. After showing how Blumer’s threat conceptualization fits the parameters of a collective emotion, I demonstrate how quantitative measurement and experimental research design can be used to capture threat as Blumer outlines it. Then, using factor analyses and regression, I illustrate that collective threat is distinct from other collective emotions and operates according to Blumer’s theoretical predictions. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of how ongoing attempts to measure collective threat and the evolution of racism in the United States highlight the continued relevance of Blumer’s work.

In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers argued that a new dimension of racial prejudice, termed "symbolic racism" and later "racial resentment," emerged among white Americans as their endorsement of traditional prejudice declined. Recently, Carmines, Sniderman, and Easter have challenged this conceptualization. Relying on American National Election Surveys data, they argue that racial resentment and the attitudes about racial policy that it presumably explains are part of the same latent construct (labeled racial policy attitudes). This conclusion undermines theories that racial prejudice among white Americans is a primary determinant of their continued opposition to racial policies. We replicate their analyses and test an alternative model using five additional samples. We find that an alternative model that specifies racial resentment as distinct from racial policy attitudes was a better fit to the data, and additionally, we find preliminary evidence that it is inappropriate to consider racial policy attitudes as a single dimension using traditional indicators.

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