ClaimsSteven Pinker

“Social psychologists find that at least 80 percent of people have fantasized about killing someone they don't like.”

Steven Pinker, essay author 1 January 2007 A History of Violence (Edge.org) archived copy

Factual Science and research methods

Social psychologists find that at least 80 percent of people have fantasized about killing someone they dislike.

Not researched Checkable, but outside the sample that was researched.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

Cite this claim

Steven Pinker, “Social psychologists find that at least 80 percent of people have fantasized about killing someone they dislike.” (said 1 January 2007). Verdict: not researched. Reliability API, claim c_e49d249d0c3e, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_e49d249d0c3e

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Steven Pinker, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More factual claims by Steven Pinker

  1. Mostly true Factual 7 October 2026
    “The studies of human persuadability, malleability, show that there’s just so much unpredictability and chaos in a human that this may be a quixotic pursuit.”

    Studies of human persuadability and malleability show substantial unpredictability and chaos in human responses.

  2. Mostly true Factual 24 September 2025
    “What they do is they coordinate on the full moon.”

    Some marine species, such as broadcast spawners, coordinate the release of gametes on the full moon or a fixed number of days after it.

  3. Mixed Factual 2023
    “So that’s an unresolved controversy in the cognitive psychology literature”

    Whether rationality and intelligence are dissociable in a human population is an unresolved controversy in the cognitive psychology literature.

  4. Mostly true Factual 27 December 2022
    “Females on average perform better than males on a 'theory of mind' test across 57 countries.”

    A new big-data study by a team including Simon Baron-Cohen found females on average outperform males on a 'theory of mind' test across 57 countries.

  5. Resolved true Factual 20 March 2020
    “John Ioannidis, among the savviest epidemiologists (his 2005 article alerted us to the replicability crisis)”

    John Ioannidis published a 2005 article that alerted scientists to the replicability crisis.

All of them

Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.