Low Self-Control, Peer Rejection, Reactive Criminal Thinking, and Delinquent Peer Associations: Connecting the Pieces of the Crime Puzzle

Abstract

The present series of studies were designed to test the control model of criminal lifestyle development which integrates aspects of low self-control, general strain, differential association, and criminal thinking. Participants for the first study were 411 boys from the Cambridge Study of Delinquency Development, and participants for the second study were 3817 children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child (NLSY-C) sample. In the first study (Cambridge), peer-rated popularity (peer rejection) and teacher-rated low self-control were cross-lagged, with results showing that while low self-control predicted peer rejection, peer rejection did not predict low self-control. In the second study (NLSY-C), findings revealed that (1) peer rejection predicted deviant peer associations but not vice versa, (2) delinquency and reactive criminal thinking mediated the peer rejection–peer delinquency relationship, and (3) negative affect (depression, anxiety, loneliness) alone did not mediate the peer rejection–peer delinquency relationship nor did it alter the indirect effects of delinquency and reactive criminal thinking on this relationship. The results of these two studies suggest that theoretical integration is possible and that reactive criminal thinking plays an important role in mediating relationships involving such traditional criminological variables as low self-control, strain created by peer rejection, and peer delinquency.