Vigilantism, Institutions, and Honor Culture: Understanding Attitudes toward Lynching in Brazil

Abstract

Why do people support extrajudicial violence? In this paper, we identify an important role for cultural norms in explaining attitudes toward lynching. In a series of survey experiments with respondents in Brazil, we examine how people view different motivations for lynchings, which characteristics of lynching scenarios garner greater support for lynching, and whether providing different types of information about lynching reduces support for it. We find that people do not believe that criminal justice institutions should be relied on to solve serious crimes and do believe that in such instances, community members have the right to take vengeance. In particular, our analysis finds that people strongly support the use of extrajudicial violence by families of victims against men who sexually assault and murder women and children.