The Role of Emotion Regulation in the Development of Youth Antisocial Behavior

Background/Purpose Antisocial Behavior (AB) in adolescence is predictive of numerous problems in adulthood, including crime, mental health concerns, substance dependence, and work problems. The emergence of Emotion Regulation (ER) is regarded as a major developmental task that cuts across adolescence and has significant implications for psychological adjustment and externalizing behavior. However, empirical inquiries have typically highlighted emotional development in children while neglecting to investigate the mechanisms of growth in adolescents. Furthermore, research on emotions has often assumed ER to be a trait (i.e., temperament or personality constructs) without considering the possible difference between state and trait components. Therefore, ER is decomposed into state and trait to test the separate longitudinal effects on AB among serious adolescent offenders.

Methods This study used the Pathways to Desistance study (2000-2010) of serious adolescent offenders. Measures were obtained from three waves of data collected from 1053 youth (87% were males; 20% were Caucasian and 43% were African American; an average age of 16 years) and were examined by employing a series of linear growth curve models using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). ER was assessed using the Suppression of Aggression scale (Weinberger & Schwartz, 1990), consisting of seven items measuring anger regulation (e.g., “people who get me angry better watch out”). AB was assessed by the Self-Reported Offending (SRO) inventory using 11 items measuring frequency of aggressive offending. To capture the components of trait and state ER, trait ER predictor in Model 1 included aggregate ER (with control variables) at level 2. In Model 2, the state (i.e., the time-varying covariate) ER was person-mean centered to estimate effects of change in ER within these models.

Results Increased ER significantly predicted decreased AB among juvenile offenders. Specifically, state ER was a significant predictor for changes in AB over one year (p <.05). Trait ER was not related to changes in AB.

Conclusions and Implications The clinical relevance of this study is underscored by the findings that ER can be comprised of state and trait components and that state ER was a more powerful predictor of AB rather than trait ER among adolescent offenders. This present study implies ER as a malleable construct (i.e., a state) which is shaped, varied, and maintained by social environmental events as well as by intra-individual emotional-regulation processes (e.g., parenting) throughout the adolescent period. Conceptualizing adolescence ER as a state (or time-varying) construct would offer a more sensitive approach to examining developmental change in ER through capturing situation-specific and time-dynamic responsiveness to social environmental interactions. Taken together, this study findings highlight an important insight for social work practitioners to develop prevention and intervention programs for juvenile delinquency by considering the role of ER in outcomes of AB.