Violence as Disease
“Violence is often described as a social issue, a moral failing, or an innate human instinct. But in fact, argues Dr. Gary Slutkin, violence is a contagion that infects a society like a disease.
This isn’t a metaphor. In THE END OF VIOLENCE, Dr. Slutkin draws on the expertise gleaned from 40+ years on the frontlines fighting deadly epidemics to reveal that violence operates according to the same predictable logic as every other contagious disease, initially infecting a small number of carriers then spreading from host to host. When a shooting occurs in a neighborhood, it’s not just a tragic event — it’s patient zero in an outbreak.”
Dr. Gary Slutkin: The End of Violence (2026)
“Violence is a contagious disease. It meets the definitions of a disease and of being contagious — that is, violence is spread from one person to another. This paper will clarify (1) how violence is like infectious diseases historically by its natural history and by its behavior; (2) how violence specifically fits the basic infectious disease framework—and how we can use this framework to better understand what is known of the pathogenic processes of violence; and (3) how we can provide better guidance to future strategies for reducing violence, in order to get more predictable results, and develop a clearer path to putting violence into the past.”
“As we have done before—for plague, typhus, leprosy, and so many other diseases — we can now apply science-based strategies and, as we did for the great infectious diseases, similarly move violence into the past.”
Dr. Gary Slutkin: Contagion of Violence: Workshop Summary (2013)
“This study extends classical models of spreading epidemics to describe the phenomenon of contagious public outrage, which eventually leads to the spread of violence following a disclosure of some unpopular political decisions and/or activity. Accordingly, a mathematical model is proposed to simulate from the start, the internal dynamics by which an external event is turned into internal violence within a population. Five kinds of agents are considered: “Upset” (U), “Violent” (V), “Sensitive” (S), “Immune” (I), and “Relaxed” (R), leading to a set of ordinary differential equations, which in turn yield the dynamics of spreading of each type of agents among the population. The process is stopped with the deactivation of the associated issue. Conditions coinciding with a twofold spreading of public violence are singled out. The results shed a new light to understand terror activity and provides some hint on how to curb the spreading of violence within population globally sensitive to specific world issues. Recent world violent events are discussed.”
From Public Outrage to the Burst of Public Violence: An Epidemic-Like Model (2014)
“Trauma as a Collective Disease and Root Cause of Protracted Social Conflict: Collective historical trauma underlies much of the social conflict in the world today. This article places the processes of collective trauma at the center of both conflict analysis and transformation. As a collaborative analysis between a clinical psychologist and a peace and conflict studies scholar-practitioner, the authors open a trans-disciplinary research agenda on trauma as a collective disease and underaddressed root cause of protracted social conflict.”
Trauma as a Collective Disease and Root Cause of Protracted Social Conflict (2018)
“[…] Thus, violence has the spread characteristic of a highly contagious disease. It is not only spread from the perpetrators of violence to the victims, it is spread to the onlookers and observers of violence. It is not surprising that violent victimization leads to violent retaliation within and between families, peer groups, schools, communities, ethnic groups, cultures, and countries. What may be more surprising to some is that simply the observation of violence also leads to increased violence within and between all these groups. Violence can even be spread to far-away people who observe violence at a distance. The boundaries of time and space that apply to most biological contagions do not apply to the contagion of violence. Why is violent behavior so contagious and how does it spread? What psychological processes are involved? How could the spread be halted?”
The Cambridge Handbook of Violent Behavior and Aggression (2012)