AdditiveRich
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Correlation between rugby and domestic violence

October 18, 2007

Does anybody have any evidence of any sort of correlation between a loss in the rugby, and an increase in domestic violence? The best a token google search turned up was an anecdotals suggesting an increase during the rugby season (which happens to be while the weather's a bit crap and everybody's inside), and a release from WR concerned at angry behaviour associated with rugby.

It all strikes me as a wee bit urban legend-y.

Posted by davidr at October 18, 2007 9:39 AM

Comments

This study:
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/resources/Violence%20Research%20Group.pdf
suggests a link between sports results and levels of aggression/domestic violence. Basically it says that when a team is strongly expected to win but in fact loses (or, interestingly, vice versa) the level of aggression in the population rises accordingly.

Posted by Pearce at October 18, 2007 10:08 PM


I asked this question of Women's Refuge when I went along to assess their application for funding; they looked surprised that there was any question about it and said that yes indeed it was a time when refuges were always full. However this was an aside; suggest you email them and ask for a definite response.

Posted by kate at October 19, 2007 2:36 PM

Reading the PDF above, it appears there's a correlation between violence (in a general sense) and *winning*, and little relation between violence and losing. Mostly they draw a line between winning -> aggression -> drinking -> violence, although all of their participants were actually attendees of games at Millennium Stadium (hey! I've been there) in Cardiff.

Posted by dritchie at October 19, 2007 3:34 PM

What I had heard was that when the home team lost there was more brawling, and when the home team won there were more rapes.

Gross.

Posted by Stuart at November 4, 2007 4:32 PM