Collective Efficacy

Transcript of an interview with Dr. Akiva Liberman on the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods

Jolene Hernon: This is a two-part podcast. Today, we are talking about collective efficacy, a very early and important finding from the “Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods.” In the companion interview, Dr. Liberman will talk about violence, race, ethnicity and exposure to firearms. Akiva, tell us about collective efficacy.

Dr. Akiva Liberman: Well, the question they were interested in was why some neighborhoods are able to better control deviant behavior and disorder than other neighborhoods. And their theory, collective efficacy theory if you will, is that the primary ingredients for that are a shared sense of values and trust of your neighbors and shared expectations about intervention in deviant behavior, to control disorder in deviant behavior.

Jolene Hernon: So that sounds a little abstract. Can you bring that into the real world for us?

Akiva Liberman: Sure, let me give you an anecdote. When I take my kids to the playground in my neighborhood, and there is a kid I don’t know who’s doing something I think is inappropriate, the question is, “Am I going to intervene?” If I think that my neighbors and I share standards of behavior, that they trust me and they expect me to intervene, then I’ll intervene. But if I think that the parents of that kid have different standards of behavior then I do, or don’t trust me and don’t want to me intervene, then I’m likely to just let it go. That’s the same concept here for collective efficacy, that you need to have shared standards of behavior and values and expectations that your neighbors are going to intervene on your behalf and vice versa.

Jolene Hernon: Okay, why is that such a big deal?

Akiva Liberman: It is a big deal for a couple of reasons. First, they show that the collective efficacy in a neighborhood was related to the amount of violence and victimization in that neighborhood. So that seemed to show that this is a process related to people being able to control disorder and deviant behavior in their neighborhoods. The other thing is that it’s long been known that some neighborhoods have more violence than others and it’s been shown that, for example, levels of poverty and disadvantage are related to level of violence in a neighborhood. But nobody really thinks that it’s a direct connection. Being poor doesn’t make you violent.

Jolene Hernon: Yes.

Akiva Liberman: So, why is that? And prior research didn’t really satisfactorily get at the processes that might be related to the poverty on the one hand and violence and other negative outcomes on the other hand.

Jolene Hernon: The more collective efficacy a neighborhood has, the less violence. And the less collective efficacy, the more violence. Is that right?

Akiva Liberman: Yes, that is right.

Jolene Hernon: So what kinds of characteristics in a neighborhood cause a neighborhood to have more collective efficacy? Or maybe I shouldn’t say cause, but what factors in a neighborhood contribute to collective efficacy?

Akiva Liberman: Neighborhoods have been found to have more collective efficacy when they have less poverty and disadvantage, more residential stability and also when they have more Latin American immigrants, who are most of the recent immigrants in Chicago.

Jolene Hernon: So it sounds like poverty is the big issue here, the big factor?

Akiva Liberman: Well, not precisely. Poverty, they would say, is a condition under which shared values, trust of your neighbors and shared expectations for intervention are undermined. Poverty and disadvantage.

Jolene Hernon: Okay.

Akiva Liberman:  But again, poverty and disadvantage don’t seem to be . . . it seems hard to explain how poverty and disadvantage would directly explain levels of violence. The other thing to say is that when two neighborhoods have equivalent levels of poverty, but one has more collective efficacy, then the one with more collective efficacy has better outcomes.

Jolene Hernon: Okay.

Akiva Liberman: Another important thing about collective efficacy is that it’s not a characteristic of individuals; no matter what my own resources are, how wealthy I am, what my own values are, I can’t generate collective efficacy by myself. It’s something about . . . I don’t want to say relationship because I don’t have to necessarily know my neighbor to share values with my neighbor, but it’s a sense of the social fabric and the collective understanding about what we should do.

Jolene Hernon: Thank you very much, Akiva Liberman, social scientist analyst here at the National Institute of Justice.