Aggressive delinquency is a salient social problem for many North American Indigenous (American Indian, Canadian First Nations) communities, and can have deleterious consequences later in life. Yet there is a paucity of research on Indigenous delinquency. Group-based trajectory modeling is used to prospectively examine trajectories of aggressive delinquency over the course of adolescence using data from 646 Indigenous adolescents from a single culture, spanning the ages of 10-19.
Five aggression trajectory groups were identified, characterized by different levels and ages of onset and desistence: non-offenders (22.1%), moderate desistors (19.9%), adolescent-limited offenders (22.2%), high desistors (16.7%), and chronic offenders (19.2%). Using the social development model of antisocial behavior, we selected relevant risk and protective factors predicted to discriminate among those most and least likely to engage in more aggressive behavior.
Higher levels of risk (i.e., parent rejection, delinquent peers, substance use, and early dating) in early adolescence were associated with being in the two groups with the highest levels of aggressive delinquency. Positive school adjustment, the only significant protective factor, was associated with being in the lowest aggression trajectory groups.
The results provide important information that could be used in developing prevention and intervention programs, particularly regarding vulnerable ages as well as malleable risk factors. Identifying those youth most at risk of engaging in higher levels of aggression may be key to preventing delinquency and reducing the over-representation of Indigenous youth in the justice system.
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By: Sittner KJ1, Hautala D2.
- 1Department of Sociology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma.
- 2Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska.
The current study examined multilevel risk factors and developmental assets on longitudinal trajectories of aggressive behavior in a diverse sample of rural adolescents. Using ecological and social capital theories, we explored the impact of positive and negative proximal processes, social capital, and contextual characteristics (i.e., school and neighborhood) on adolescent aggression. Data came from the Rural Adaptation Project, which is a 5-year longitudinal panel study of more than 4,000 middle and high school students from 40 public schools in two rural, low income counties in North Carolina. A three-level HLM model (N = 4,056 at Wave 1, 4,251 at Wave 2, and 4,256 at Wave 3) was estimated to predict factors affecting the change trajectories of aggression.
Results indicated that negative proximal processes in the form of parent-adolescent conflict, friend rejection, peer pressure, delinquent friends, and school hassles were significant predictors of aggression. In addition, social capital in the form of ethnic identity, religious orientation, and school satisfaction served as buffers against aggression. Negative proximal processes were more salient predictors than positive proximal processes. School and neighborhood characteristics had a minimal impact on aggression. Overall, rates of aggression did not change significantly over the 3-year study window.
Findings highlight the need to intervene in order to decrease negative interactions in the peer and parent domains
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By: Smokowski PR1,2, Guo S3, Cotter KL4, Evans CB1, Rose RA1.
- 1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, North Carolina Academic Center for Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
- 2University of Kansas School of Social Welfare, Lawrence, Kansas.
- 3Washington University George Warren Brown School of Social Work, St. Louis, Missouri.
- 4Arizona State University School of Social Work, Tucson, Arizona
Observers use facial appearance to predict social behavior and individuals' personality traits. We examined the possibility that social contexts can also influence face perception. To investigate the relationship between competitive social contexts and perceived appearance, we leveraged a known link between aggression and a simple physiognomic cue: the facial width-to-height ratio (WHR). Faces with higher WHRs are perceived as being more aggressive (Carre, McCormick, & Mondloch, 2009) and individuals with naturally higher WHRs exhibit more aggressive behavior (Carre & McCormick, 2008).
Participants played a simple skill game either in competition (N=30) or cooperation (N=30) with a confederate prior to reconstructing the facial appearance of their opponent/partner and a refereeing third party by arranging segmented facial features on a screen until they had produced a best likeness of the target individual. We anticipated that higher perceived aggression during competition would lead to higher reconstructed WHRs than cooperation.
The results supported this prediction: participants' reconstructions had significantly higher WHRs (p< 0.01) following a competitive interaction for both the observer's opponent and the referee. A follow-up experiment that included competitive (N=30) and cooperative interaction (N=30), as well as a baseline condition with no salient social component (N=30) replicated and extended this result. In this second task, we observed a main effect of social context (F(1,87)=5.14, p=0.008) and post-hoc tests revealed that competition led to higher WHRs than cooperation (p=0.013) or the baseline condition (p=0.026), while WHRs in the cooperation group did not differ from those in the baseline group (p=0.96).
This suggests that competition and subsequent perceived aggression systematically bias perceived appearance, while cooperation has little direct effect. These results demonstrate that the social perception of faces is not merely a feed-forward process, but instead that the social contexts in which people interact can shape face perception
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