An Examination of Mediators Between Victimization and Offending Among Young Men: The Application of General Strain Theory

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:  Guilt enables individuals to identify with a victim and prevents emotional distancing from the effects of victimization (Menesini & Camodeca, 2008). For this study, guilt is understood as emotional reactions based on a self-appraisal of behaviors as morally wrong and contributory to morally objectionable outcomes (Olthof, Ferguson, Bloemers, & Deij, 2004). Guilt is little studied in adolescents in general, and only few studies consider how it contributes to externalizing and internalizing behaviors (Muris, 2015). A particularly intriguing recent study examined the role of guilt in dysregulated behaviors in a clinical population of children and adolescents (Spice, Viljoen, Douglas & Hart, 2015). In particular, emerging research suggests that higher levels of guilt contribute to higher levels of mood and anxiety symptoms and low levels or the absence of guilt are associated with higher levels conduct problems (Muris, et al., 2015). Further, lower levels of guilt and remorse are associated with more asocial and callous unemotional behaviors in adolescents, especially toward their victims (Roşan, & Costea-Bărluţiu, 2013; Spice, Viljoen, Douglas & Hart). What is not fully understood is how this absence of guilt and remorse evolves although some research has suggested that community violence and direct and vicarious victimization increases psychological distress that mediates offending behaviors over time (Hartinger et al., 2011).

Since youth respond to victimization in a number of ways (Agnew et al., 2011), we wanted to test how youth responded to victimization experiences and how those experiences contributed to future offending (if at all). We anticipated that as victimization increased, youth would experience less guilt (due to moral “numbing”) and subsequently feel less guilty about offending.

METHODS: The current study involved secondary analysis of data from the first two waves of the Buffalo Longitudinal Study of Young Men (BLSYM), a multi-wave panel study designed to identify predictors of adolescent substance abuse and delinquency, and supported by a five-year grant (# RO1 AA08157) through the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (Zhang, Welte & Wieczorek, 2001). The first wave included 625 males between 16 and 19 years old, and 625 parents or caregivers. The second wave included 625 males between 16 and 19 years old, and 625 parents or caregivers. SPSS 19 was used for descriptive statistics, and SEM was conducted in Mplus 6. The study controlled for a number of variables commonly associated with victimization and offending, including age, race, family structure, family SES, and parental support. Endogenous variables include direct victimization, neighborhood strain, parental monitoring, past (wave 1) offending, psychological distress, low levels of guilt, and subsequent (wave 2) offending

RESULTS:  Direct victimization experiences in the past are associated with lower levels of guilt through a mediated relationship involving past offending behavior. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the relationship between past offending and subsequent offending is mediated by low levels of guilt, independent of the comparatively weak effect of a youth’s level of psychological distress.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Study results underscore the importance of developing effective interventions to address victimization experiences to prevent offending.