Hugh P. Whitt

Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness

Data from a representative sample of 1,070 married Protestants and Catholics were used to examine the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. Although couples may vary in the extent to which they share religious views (e.g., beliefs, values), previous research has treated religious homogamy as a dichotomy; a couple is either homogamous or it is not. A partial explanation for this is that few studies have gone beyond the broad divisions of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. In the present study religious bodies were classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual, yielding six categories: Baptist, Calvinist, Catholic, fundamentalist, Lutheran, and Methodist. These categories were then used to develop a measure of estimated “religious distance” or degrees of heterogamy. This measure was used to test the hypothesis that the larger the religious distance or disparity, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. The hypothesis was supported by the data.

Inequality, Economic Development and Lethal Violence: A Cross-National Analysis of Suicide and Homicide

A theoretical tradition predating Durkheim links suicide and homicide as two currents in a single stream of lethal violence. This paper explores the relationships of inequality and economic development to suicide in a sample of 31 nations using both this perspective and the more traditional approach, which treats suicide and homicide separately. Inequality is generally a better predictor than development. After controlling for development, it is curvilinearly related to homicide and to total lethal violence, and it has negative linear effects on suicide and the SMR, a measure of the direction in which violence is directed. Controlling for inequality, development is unrelated to total violence, curvilinearly related to the SMR, and only weakly related to suicide and homicide.

R-Order and Religious Switching

Rokeach (1960) has suggested that religious switching and intermarriage reflect a pattern in which choices are made on the basis of perceived similarity of denominations. This ordering (known as R-order) is: (1) Catholic, (2) Episcopalian, (3) Lutheran, (4) Presbyterian, (5) Methodist, and (6) Baptist. (Subsequent studies have placed sectarians in the seventh position.) In our research, data from the 1982-83 General Social Surveys showed that switching occurred most often among denominations which were one or two steps removed from each other in R-order. There was, however, a failure to discriminate between denominations more than two steps removed.

The Civilizing Process and Its Discontents: Suicide and Crimes against Persons in France, 1825–1830

A spatial analysis of data for French départements assembled in the 1830s by André‐Michel Guerry and Adolphe d’Angeville examines the impacts of modernization and resistance to governmental “Frenchification” policies on measures of violence and its direction. In the context of Unnithan et al.’s integrated model of suicide and homicide, high suicide rates in the northern core and a predilection for violence against others in the southern periphery may be consistently interpreted in terms of theories of the civilizing process and internal colonialism. Alternative explanations of southern violence in 19th‐century France are explored and rejected, and additional theoretical applications are suggested.

Illness role theory, the labeling perspective and the social meanings of mental illness: an empirical test.

Abstract Data from a sample of mental patients and the general public is used to test a series of hypotheses linking the individuals understanding of his deviance to his impairment in social roles and his contact with psychiatric treatment sources. The relationships examined are derived from illness role theory and the labeling or societal reaction theory of mental disorder. While some support is found for both theories, we conclude that neither perspective alone adequately explains the ways in which persons interpret their problematic feelings and behaviors.

Some theoretical and methodological reasons for using Stephan-Deming adjustments in religious mobility tables

Abstract Sherkats (1990) critique of the use of Stephan-Deming adjustments to control for the size of social networks in studies of religious mobility is flawed by his misinterpretation of the concepts of “opportunity structure,” “destination marginals,” and “model,” as used by Whitt, Crockett, and Babchuk (1988) . These concepts are clarified and the Stephan-Deming adjustments are shown to be a theoretically and methodologically sound approach for investigating religious switching. Substantive implications for data on black Americans are explored.

Status Characteristics and Performance: An Assessment of their Effects on Acceptance of Influence

According to the theory of status characteristics, both status characteristics and performance information are combined to arrive at a single evaluation of the group member (combining). In this paper, an alternative formulation is proposed which maintains that status characteristics are used as a means of forming evaluations of group members only when members do not have access to performance information. When such information is available, it is used in arriving at an evaluation for the person (balancing). Empirical assessment of these positions indicates that combining occurs when status characteristics and performance information are consistent and that balancing occurs when status characteristics and performance information are inconsistent. Implications for the empirical scope of the theory of status characteristics are considered.

Vehicular Homicide in France in the Equine Era Were Distracted Driving and Road Rage Decivilizing Consequences of the Civilizing Process in the 1840s

Contrary to what would be expected from Norbert Elias, whose theory of the civilizing process links criminal violence to impulsivity, data from the Comptes généraux de l’administration de la justice criminelle en France show that rates of homicide due to imprudence in controlling a horse or cart increased with modernization across départements early in the nineteenth century. Drawing on work by Elias and others, we suggest an interpretation based on traffic congestion and changes in the social construction of time as Western societies became more modernized and urbanized.