Moving Beyond Individual-Level Explanations: Exploring the Contextual Correlates of Mass Murder

• Author: Emma E. Fridel
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221078580
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Date: 01 August 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2022, Vol. 49, No. 8, August 2022, 1134 –1153.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548221078580

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© 2022 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

1134

MOVING BEYOND INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL

EXPLANATIONS

Exploring the Contextual Correlates of Mass Murder

EMMA E. FRIDEL

Florida State University

Due to the rarity of mass murder, scholars have focused almost exclusively on its individual-level risk factors, assuming that

structural characteristics play a negligible role in the etiology of this infrequent but impactful crime. This study explores

whether local structural factors influence the incidence rate of mass murder and its logical comparison group, homicide.

Using information from a novel mass killing database as well as the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), two-level

count regression models examine the county- and state-level factors that predict the number of mass murder (N = 549) and

homicide incidents (N = 274,399) in 3,143 U.S. counties from 2000 to 2018. Results indicate that mass murder is more likely

to occur in disadvantaged and racially/ethnically heterogeneous areas, similar to homicide in general. Future research should

examine both perpetrators and their environments instead of assuming that mass murders are exclusively driven by individ-

ual-level factors.

Keywords: homicide; aggression; criminology; quantitative methods; violence

INTRODUCTION

Defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the killing or four or more indi-

viduals within a single incident (Ressler et al., 1988), mass murder has increasingly become

the focus of national debate. Despite the high-profile nature of these crimes, little research

has explored the correlates of mass murder. This is, in part, due to its rarity: mass murders

typically occur between 20 and 30 times a year on average and constitute less than 1% of

all homicides in the United States (Krouse & Richardson, 2015). The infrequency with

which mass killings occur forced scholars to rely heavily on case study analyses, qualita-

tive methods, and descriptive statistics for decades, as no official data set exists to docu-

ment these incidents. As a result, the study of mass murder was historically considered

the domain of psychiatrists and psychologists (Dietz, 1986), with early work examining

AUTHORS’ NOTE: The author would like to thank James Alan Fox, Gregory M. Zimmerman, and Anthony

A. Braga for their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, and Trenton D. Mize for his help with equal-

ity of coefficient tests. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Emma E. Fridel, College

of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 408 College of Criminology & Criminal Justice

Building, 112 S. Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306; e-mail: efridel@fsu.edu.

1078580CJBXXX10.1177/00938548221078580Criminal Justice and BehaviorFridel / Exploring the Contextual Correlates of Mass Murder

research-article2022

Fridel / EXPLORING THE CONTEXTUAL CORRELATES OF MASS MURDER 1135

psychopathology (e.g., violent paranoia, “berserk syndrome,” narcissistic injury, nihilism,

superman complex, etc.). Aside from a few notable exceptions, until recently criminologists

have largely ignored mass murder or dismissed it as a small fraction of all homicides.

The historical conceptualization of mass murder as a psychological—rather than socio-

logical or criminological—problem has contributed to two major gaps in the extant litera-

ture. First, scholarship has focused almost exclusively on individual-level risk factors,

including mental illness, social isolation, and job loss (Duwe, 2007; Fox et al., 2019); in

contrast, the role of local structural factors—otherwise known as contextual or ecological

correlates and defined as aggregate socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of

communities—such as concentrated disadvantage, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, residential

instability, and familial disruption remains relatively unexplored. This omission stands in

stark contrast to theoretical and empirical evidence that individuals cannot be artificially

separated from the social worlds in which they live (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The literature

on homicide, in particular, has repeatedly demonstrated that context matters, regardless of

locale, time period, level of analysis, operationalization, and offense type (Land et al.,

1990). Even further, recent work on related crimes including intimate partner violence, fam-

ily violence, homicide-suicide, and school shootings has found structural effects, as well as

evidence that context moderates the role of individual-level risk factors. Taken together,

prior literature suggests that social context plays a role in the etiology of mass murder, yet

little research has examined this issue directly.

Second, research on mass murder has been largely divorced from the broader homicide

literature, and instead treated as an independent body of scholarship. This artificial divide

has impeded mass killing researchers from drawing upon the theoretical and methodologi-

cal advances in the overall study of lethal violence (e.g., the importance of context).

Integrating mass murder with the broader homicide literature is critical to understanding

their shared and distinct risk factors, and in turn, to developing effective violence preven-

tion initiatives. In other words, it is impossible to understand what makes mass murder

unique without knowing how it differs from homicide more generally. Doing so is espe-

cially important, considering that mass killings disproportionately shape the public policies

that influence thousands of homicides committed in the United States each year (Fridel,

2021a).

To address these two gaps in the literature, the current study draws upon the neighbor-

hood effects literature to explore (a) whether local structural characteristics predict the

number of mass killings in a county and (b) whether local structural characteristics differ-

entially impact mass murder and homicide. The study begins by situating mass murder

research within a social ecological framework before exploring the role of context.

LITERATURE REVIEW

AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING MASS MURDER

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory argues that individuals do not

develop in a vacuum, but rather influence and are influenced by their social environment.

Individuals are nested within interacting systems at varying levels of analysis, including the

microsystem, or the interactions and relationships an individual has with their immediate

surroundings (e.g., the family and peers); the mesosystem, or interactions between distinct

microsystems (e.g., connections between the family and school); the exosystem, or the