Temperature, cultural masculinity, and domestic political violence - A cross-national study

Cross-national data sets were used to examine the association between ambie nt temperature and internal political violence in 136 countries between 194 8 and 1977. Political riots and armed attacks occur more frequently in warm countries than in both cold and hot countries, after controlling for effec ts of population size and density and levels of socioeconomic development a nd democracy. National differences on the cultural masculinity dimension, h owever, do account for this curvilinear temperature-violence association, i n a subsample of 53 countries, suggesting that culture mediates the associa tion. An explanation for this mediation in terms of Paternal Investment The ory is proposed.