RESUMEN
Mothers of 317 first-time juvenile offenders (M = 15.35 years old) were interviewed over 2.5 years about their expectations and aspirations for their sons' futures. Mothers' expectations were lower than their aspirations, reflecting a discrepancy between what mothers felt was important for their child's future and what they considered likely to happen. As their children continued to engage in delinquent acts, mothers' expectations for their sons' future success diminished. Youth age moderated the association between delinquency and maternal expectations, such that when perceived delinquency was high, expectations were lower for mothers of young sons compared to mothers of older sons. These findings carry implications for practice and intervention, as parent expectations and aspirations are both directly and indirectly associated with youth achievement.
Asunto(s)
Delincuencia Juvenil , Madres/psicología , Motivación , Adolescente , Humanos , MasculinoRESUMEN
Adolescent first-time offenders demonstrate greater risk of continued offending, justice system contact, and high school dropout. The current study evaluates if optimistic expectations protect youth by reducing offending and improving school grades for 3 years following a first arrest (N = 1,165, Mage = 15.29). This article also considers whether improved behavior raises expectations about the future and uses autoregressive latent trajectory modeling with structured residuals to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between expectations and behavior. The results indicated that positive expectations reduce offending and improve grades, which are in turn associated with higher expectations. Although raising expectations may improve outcomes following an arrest, ensuring adolescents have the tools to meet their goals may be an effective way to raise expectations.
Asunto(s)
Éxito Académico , Conducta del Adolescente , Criminales/psicología , Motivación , Adolescente , Humanos , Estudios Longitudinales , MasculinoRESUMEN
Although prior research finds a robust link between delinquent behavior and expectations, or an adolescent's perceived likelihood of obtaining one's future goals, fewer studies have evaluated aspirations, or the perceived importance of achieving one's goals. In addition, few studies consider how individual traits such as impulsivity affect the degree to which expectations and aspirations motivate or deter delinquent behavior. We contribute to this body of research by evaluating the independent effects of expectations and aspirations, and the aspiration-expectation gap (i.e., strain) on delinquent behavior during the year following an adolescent's first arrest using a large (N = 1117), racially/ethnically diverse sample of male adolescents (46.55% Latino, 35.81% Black, 14.95% White, and 2.69% Other race). In addition, we considered how impulse control interacts with expectations, aspirations, and strain to motivate behavior. Our results indicated that both aspirations, expectations and strain uniquely influence criminal behavior. Importantly, aspirations interacted with impulse control, such that aspirations affected delinquency only among youth with higher impulse control. Our findings suggest that aspirations may only influence behavior if youth also have the psychosocial capabilities to consider their future aspirations when behaving in the present.
Asunto(s)
Aspiraciones Psicológicas , Trastornos Disruptivos, del Control de Impulso y de la Conducta/psicología , Delincuencia Juvenil/psicología , Adolescente , Negro o Afroamericano/psicología , Trastorno de Personalidad Antisocial , Trastornos Disruptivos, del Control de Impulso y de la Conducta/diagnóstico , Trastornos Disruptivos, del Control de Impulso y de la Conducta/etnología , Femenino , Hispánicos o Latinos/psicología , Humanos , Conducta Impulsiva , Delincuencia Juvenil/etnología , Funciones de Verosimilitud , Masculino , Motivación , Población Blanca/psicologíaRESUMEN
Social ecological theories and decades of supporting research suggest that contexts exert a powerful influence on adolescent delinquency. Individual traits, such as impulse control, also pose a developmental disadvantage to adolescents through increasing risk of delinquency. However, such individual differences may also predispose some youth to struggle more in adverse environments, but also to excel in enriched environments. Despite the prominence of impulse control in both developmental and criminological literatures, researchers are only beginning to consider impulse control as an individual characteristic that may affect developmental outcomes in response to environmental input. Using a racially diverse (Latino 46 %; Black 37 %; White 15 %; other race 2 %) sample of 1,216 first-time, male, juvenile offenders from the longitudinal Crossroads Study, this study examined key interactions between baseline impulse control and the home, school, and neighborhood contexts in relation to delinquency within the following 6 months. The results indicated that even after accounting for prior delinquency, youth in more negative home, school, and neighborhood contexts engaged in the same amount of delinquency in the following 6 months regardless of their level of impulse control. However, the effects of positive home, school, and neighborhood contexts on delinquency were stronger for youth with moderate or high impulse control and minimally affected youth with low impulse control. The findings suggest two risk factors for delinquency: low impulse control as a dispositional vulnerability that operates independently of developmental context, and a second that results from a contextual vulnerability.
Asunto(s)
Trastornos Disruptivos, del Control de Impulso y de la Conducta/diagnóstico , Trastornos Disruptivos, del Control de Impulso y de la Conducta/psicología , Individualidad , Delincuencia Juvenil/legislación & jurisprudencia , Delincuencia Juvenil/psicología , Cambio Social , Medio Social , Adolescente , Trastornos Disruptivos, del Control de Impulso y de la Conducta/etnología , Femenino , Humanos , Delincuencia Juvenil/etnología , Masculino , Grupos Minoritarios/legislación & jurisprudencia , Grupos Minoritarios/psicología , Factores de Riesgo , Instituciones AcadémicasRESUMEN
Both environmental factors and genetic variation, particularly in genes responsible for the dopaminergic system such as DRD4, DRD2, and DAT1 (SLC6A3), affect adolescent delinquency. The school context, despite its developmental importance, has been overlooked in gene-environment research. Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (NICHD ECCYD), this study examined key interactions between school attachment and (a) each of the DRD4, DRD2, and DAT1 (SLC6A3) genotypes; and (b) a polygenic score. Results indicate that there is a main effect of school attachment, unlike genetic variation, on delinquency. Interestingly, there are important interactive effects of school attachment and dopaminergic genotypes on delinquency. Carriers of the DRD2-A1 allele were differentially affected by both positive and negative school environments, whereas DAT1-10R carriers fared the same as 9R homozygotes in poorer and moderate school environments, but fared disproportionately better in more positive environments. Contrary to expectations, youth without the DRD4-7R allele were particularly affected by the school environment. These findings contribute to the literature considering the roles of both context and genes in delinquency research, and inform our understanding of the individual-level traits that influence sensitivity to particular contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record
Asunto(s)
Proteínas de Transporte de Dopamina a través de la Membrana Plasmática/genética , Delincuencia Juvenil , Apego a Objetos , Polimorfismo Genético/genética , Receptores de Dopamina D2/genética , Receptores de Dopamina D4/genética , Adolescente , Femenino , Genotipo , Humanos , Masculino , Instituciones AcadémicasRESUMEN
Parental rejection is linked to deep and enduring adjustment problems during adolescence. This study aims to further clarify this relation by demonstrating what has long been posited by parental acceptance/rejection theory but never validated empirically-namely that adolescents' unique or subjective experience of parental rejection independently informs their future adjustment. Among a longitudinal, multi-informant sample of 161 families (early adolescents were 47 % female and 40 % European American) this study utilized a multitrait-multimethod confirmatory factor analysis to isolate for each early adolescent-parent dyad, the adolescent's distinct view of parental rejection (i.e., the adolescent unique perspective) from the portion of his or her view that overlaps with his or her parent's view. The findings indicated that adolescents' unique perspectives of maternal rejection were not differentiated from their unique perspectives of paternal rejection. Also, consistent with parental acceptance-rejection theory, early adolescents' unique perspectives of parental rejection were associated with worse adjustment (internalizing and externalizing) 1 year later. This study further demonstrates the utility and validity of the multitrait-multimethod confirmatory factor analysis approach for identifying and examining adolescent unique perspectives. Both conceptually and analytically, this study also integrates research focused on unique perspectives with a distinct but related line of research focused on discrepancies in perspectives.