M. Warr et Cg. Ellison, Rethinking social reactions to crime: Personal and altruistic fear in family households, AM J SOCIOL, 106(3), 2000, pp. 551-578
Research on fear of crime in the United States has concentrated on personal
fear while overlooking the fear that people have for others in their lives
-children, spouses, friends-whose safety they value. Sample survey data rev
eal that altruistic fear (fear for others) has a distinctive structure in f
amily households and is more common and often more intense than personal fe
ar. Many of the everyday precautions practiced by Americans and conventiona
lly assumed to be self-protective appear to be a consequence of altruistic
fear. These and other findings underscore the need to understand fear of cr
ime as a social rather than an individual phenomenon.