Sixth Blog Response

     Introduce the sources you found after reading Sampson's 9th chapter. Explain how they relate to issues of particular importance to one or both of your emphases and then how you feel they relate to Sampson's methods for testing altruism, cynicism, and other-regarding behavior in Chicago. Be sure to include complete citation information for your sources.
     In Sampson's 9th chapter, he goes into great detail focusing on three main points: social altruism, cynicism, and the "good community." He explains how these things either go towards helping or hurting the collective good of the community, and summarizes by saying that collective efficacy along with an altruistic character help the community wellbeing while moral or legal cynicism harm the community wellbeing. This chapter is focused around a few tests that he examines in order to get a closer look at how the neighbors of Chicago may work. The two tests that he uses are the "lost letter" test and the CPR test, both of which he says will give us greater insight into how these neighborhoods work.
     One of the implications that Sampson points out towards the end of the chapter is that evolutionary biologists have linked altruistic behavior as a key factor in natural selection (230). In an article titled Can natural selection favour altruism between species, the authors Wyatt, West, and Gardner  develop a spatial population genetic model of two interacting species and study whether altruism between different species either helps or hurts one or both species throughout the course of natural selection. While they come to the final conclusion that "natural selection does not favour traits that provide benefits exclusively to individuals of other species," they were attempting to find a link between species that would show benefits from helping one another.
     Another interesting study is one conducted by Swatt, Varano, Uchida, and Solomon, and focuses on crime and collective efficacy in Miami. Titled Fear of crime, incivilities, and collective efficacy in four Miami neighborhoods, this research article attempts to tie in the importance of collective efficacy when focusing on crime. They did this through conducting surveys throughout Miami-Dade county, and then forming models based on these surveys. Through their studies they found that the "relationship between perceptions of collective efficacy and fear of crime exhibit significant heterogeneity between neighborhoods." They focused largely on the effects that incivilities such as physical/social disorder had on collective efficacy, and the effect that this then had on crime.

Works Cited:

Shellie E. Solomon, et al. "Fear Of Crime, Incivilities, And Collective Efficacy In Four Miami Neighborhoods." Journal Of          Criminal Justice 41.1 (2013): 1-11. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.

Wyatt, G. A. K., S. A. West, and A. Gardner. "Can Natural Selection Favour Altruism Between Species?." Journal Of          Evolutionary Biology 26.9 (2013): 1854-1865. Academic Search Premier. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.