Socioeconomic,family, and social stress correlates of adolescent antisocial and delinquent behavior

A total of 84 male and female adolescents were surveyed for SFS, family systemic functioning, and four types of social stress (Induced Transitions, Daily Hassles, Developmental Transitions, and Circumscribed Life Events) in relation to level of antisocial and delinquent behavior to determine the individual and cumulative effect of these psychosocial predictors. Univariate analyses indicated that perceived and Desired Family Cohesion, Daily Hassles, Circumscribed Life Events, and Developmental Transitions correlated significantly with reported antisocial and delinquent behavior, but SES and gender did not. Multivariate analyses affirmed that SES was of little use in understanding such behavior, at least among the general population, and that family functioning and social stress contributed interactively. Desired Cohesion was the most reliable indicator, with other family and stress variables' importance differing for males and females. These findings suggest that a family's ability to support each other and to harness that support to cope with transitions and stress during adolescence relates to a lower level of antisocial behavior.     

Developmental correlates of emotional intelligence: Temperament,family environment and childhood trauma

This study examined temperament, environmental factors (family environment and childhood trauma), and the interaction between them as developmental correlates of ability and trait emotional intelligence (EI). Using 97 university students, correlational analyses revealed that temperament characteristics were related to trait but not ability EI. Components of family environment and childhood trauma were not significantly related to ability or trait EI. Multiple regression analyses confirmed the importance of temperament in predicting trait EI, but provided little support for the role of environmental factors or their interactions with temperament in predicting either type of EI.     

The role of stress,social support,and family environment in adolescent mothers' parenting

Adolescent childbearing is a major social and economic problem in the US. The authors assessed the role of stress, social support, and family environment upon adolescent mothers' parenting behaviors. 75 African-American, mother-infant pairs participated in the study. Each mother was administered a questionnaire and observed in a ten-minute teaching task with her baby. The study found that the adolescent mother's mother was the most frequent provider of support and the baby's father was the most frequent source of conflict. Mothers who identified more individuals as a source of conflict tended to have less positive parenting behaviors. Child age and interpersonal conflict were found through analysis to be significant predictors of maternal behavior. Furthermore, social support moderated the effects of interpersonal conflict when conflicted networks were large. Parenting stress was not a significant predictor of maternal behavior.     

Effects of social stress on operant drinking of alcoholics and social drinkers

The relationship between social stress and alcohol consumption was examined in 10 alcoholics and 10 social drinkers matched on age and education. Drinking was measured via 10 minutes of operant responding whereby lever presses earned alcohol reinforcement on an FR-50 schedule. During stress conditions, subjects were exposed to simulated interpersonal encounters requiring assertive behavior. In terms of autonomie arousal, both groups were equally stressed. The no-stress condition consisted of non-threatening discussions of pleasurable spare time activities. Alcoholics significantly increased their operant responding to obtain alcohol following stress conditions while social drinkers did not.     

Differences in nonshared individual, school, and family variables between delinquent and nondelinquent Hmong adolescents

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether there were differences between Hmong immigrant siblings on multiple nonshared individual, school, and family variables. Participants were 58 sibling pairs (29 delinquent pairs and 29 nondelinquent pairs), who ranged in age from 13 to 21 years. There were 11 pairs of boys, 3 pairs of girls, and 15 pairs of opposite-sex siblings. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance indicated that delinquent and nondelinquent sibling groups were significantly different in participation in organized activities, antisocial attitudes, delinquent behaviors, school truancy, school performance, and parents' labeling. The findings have implications for future research on sibling delinquency in Hmong immigrant families and for program development and delivery.     

Attributions for social failure and aggression in incarcerated delinquent youth

While a variety of cognitive deficits and biases have been found to characterize aggressive and delinquent children and youth, very little attention has focused on determining whether aggressive youth also display deviant attributional beliefs in response to social failure. Research in the more impersonal cognitive domains such as achievement has shown attributions for failure to be potent determinants of both affective rections and subsequent responding. Thus, the present study was designed to investigate whether specific attributional patterns following social failure may also relate to aggressive behavior. The aim of this study was to determine the relation betweeen the level of self-reported physical aggression and specific atttributional patterns following hypothetical social failure in a sample of incarcerated delinquent males. While the general hypotheses were that increased aggressiveness would be related to a greater tendency to endorse attributions for social failure that are external, stable, and controllable, only the hypothesis with regard to controllability was supported. The findings are discussed in terms of the relation between cognition and aggression in delinquent youth.This research was supported in part by grant MH 44768-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health to the first author. The authors would like to thank the staff of the Illinois Youth Center-St. Charles for their cooperation.     

Developmental and social determinants of religious social categorization

The purpose of this study was to assess developmental and social determinants of the age at which children become aware that the social environment can be marked by categorization into religious groups and that those groups are associated with different religious beliefs. The results show that middle childhood is a critical period for this religious social categorization. Moreover, social factors play a role in the development. Religious categorization is likely to appear sooner in children attending heterogeneous schools than in those at homogeneous schools, and children from the minority religious group in the country understand religious categorization earlier than children from the majority group. However, no relation was found between the age at which religious categorization was understood and parents' religious socialization practices. This study is of both theoretical and practical interest: It complements what is already known about gender, race, and ethnic categorization by integrating developmental and social frameworks, and it can serve as a guideline for educational programs.     

The structure of self-reported aggression, drug use, and delinquent behaviors during early adolescence

Examined the structure of self-report scales designed to assess the frequency of adolescent problem behaviors. Urban (n = 988) and rural (n = 1,895) middle school students completed the Problem Behavior Frequency Scale (Farrell, Danish, & Howard, 1992a) and measures of other relevant constructs. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a model that included specific factors related to aggression, drug use, and delinquent behaviors, and a higher order problem behavior factor. Findings did not support a distinction between physical and nonphysical aggression. Results were generally consistent across settings (i.e., urban vs. rural) and gender. Other relevant constructs, including peer pressure for drug use and attitudes favoring aggression, had both specific associations with relevant first-order factors and more general associations with the second-order factor. These findings support the construction of separate scales assessing specific domains of problem behaviors in studies of adolescents' problem behaviors.     

Mediating effects of family social support on child psychological adjustment in juvenile rheumatoid arthritis

This study assessed the mediating effects of social support on psychological adjustment in children having to cope with the ongoing chronic strain of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Disease activity, family social support, and peer social support were entered into hierarchical multiple regression analyses to statistically predict internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Family social support was a statistically significant predictor of child psychological adjustment for both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, accounting for 22% of the variance in each. These findings are consistent with the stress-social support-psychological adjustment relationship that has received empirical attention in studies on physically healthy children. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for primary and secondary prevention efforts for those chronically ill and handicapped children who are at increased risk for psychological adjustment problems.     

The relationship of the family social environment, peer influences, and peer relationships to altruistic orientation in Chinese children

This study investigated the correlation between the family social environment, peer influences, and peer relationships to altruistic orientation in Chinese children. Results in the present study showed that (a) altruistic orientation measured by the Child Altruism Inventory (H. K. Ma & M. C. Leung, 1991) was directly associated with a positive family social environment, (b) altruistic orientation was directly associated with positive peer influences and was inversely associated with negative peer influences, and (c) altruistic orientation was directly associated with perceived prosocial behavior of one's best friend and inversely associated with perceived antisocial behavior of one's best friend. The findings suggested that a good family social environment, positive peer influences, and good peer relationships tended to increase altruistic orientation.     

Instructed versus pharmacological effects of alcohol in alcoholics and social drinkers

Twelve alcoholics and 12 social drinkers were studied in an experiment where instructions about alcohol or placebo were orthogonally crossed with administration of alcohol or placebo in a Balanced Placebo Design. Three subjects were simultaneously observed while watching soccer games on the TV together and having free access to a mixed drink, which in the alcohol conditions contained 150ml of 80% proof vodka. The assessment procedure included several aspects of drinking behavior, behavioral observations during the session, psychiatric ratings and nurse observations before and after each session, ratings for craving, self-reported state anxiety and physiological changes (heart rate and blood pressure). In general, the results showed the alcoholic's behavior to be controlled by instruction-induced expectancies rather than by the actual beverage given, whereas the social drinkers showed tendencies in the opposite direction. The implications of these results for the traditional disease conception of alcoholism and for learning theory approaches are discussed.     

Cheating following success and failure in heavy and moderate social drinkers

Two groups of American undergraduates (moderate and heavy social drinkers) completed a matrix task and received either positive or negative feedback on their performance. Following this they were given a maze task, which was designed so that cheating could be detected. Heavy drinkers cheated more than moderate drinkers under success conditions (positive feedback). Heavy drinkers who received positive feedback also cheated more than heavy drinkers who received negative feedback. The results are interpreted in terms of self-handicapping theory.     

Social episodes and social structure in an academic setting: The social environment of an intact group

The social environment of an intact academic group, composed of faculty members, research students, and staff, was studied using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) procedure. The perceived group structure and the perception of social episodes were represented, and the relationship between these two aspects of the social environment was analyzed. Results indicated that (a) the perceived group structure could be adequately represented in three dimensions with group members differentiated along dimensions of sociability, creativity, and competence, (b) an individuals' perception of the group and his position within it were significantly related, (c) group members perceived the social episodes of the group in terms of attribute dimensions such as anxiety, involvement, evaluation, and socioemotional vs task orientation, and (d) an individual's formal status and perceived position within the group were significantly related to his perception of the group's episodes. The results are discussed in terms of the factors influencing episode perception, and the symbolic processes mediating between social position and perception. The utility of social episodes in describing a social environment is considered.     

The salience of the family in antisocial and delinquent behaviors among Spanish adolescents

The authors examined the relations between self-report measures of parental support, communication, and psychological control and measures of antisocial and delinquent behavior in a sample of 641 Spanish adolescents (M age = 14.35 years, SD = 1.53 years). Findings revealed similarities in the relations between parenting processes and both measures of deviant behavior. The results also demonstrated the need for researchers to consider the parenting effects of mothers and fathers independently. Specifically, maternal support was a negative predictor of antisocial and delinquent behaviors of male adolescents, and maternal psychological control was a positive predictor of antisocial and delinquent behaviors of female adolescents. Paternal parenting efforts did not account for additional variability.     

Effects of alcohol on the storage and retrieval processes of heavy social drinkers

Two experiments investigated the effects of intoxication, expectation of intoxication, and state dependency on learning and relearning in male heavy social drinkers. In both studies, subjects participated in two daily sessions. On Day 1, intoxicated and sober subjects were presented with word lists for immediate free recall, followed by total free recall of all words. On Day 2, with or without a change in drug state, subjects were given a second total recall test, the same lists for immediate recall, and a third total recall test. In Experiment 1, 10 subjects served in each of four groups formed by crossing expectation with reception of alcohol on Day 1; all subjects were sober on Day 2. In Experiment 2, 12 subjects served in each of four groups formed by crossing drug state on Day 1 with drug state on Day 2 (sober-sober, sober-intoxicated, intoxicated-intoxicated, intoxicated-sober), and all expected alcohol. In both studies, intoxication produced a performance deficit, but retention loss on Day 2 was the same for change- and constant-state subjects. Expectation had no effect on performance. Results are discussed in terms of an alcohol-induced storage deficiency rather than a retrieval deficit.