Mediating the Mediator: The Indirect Effect of Short-Term Hostility on the Past Reactive Criminal Thinking–Future Reactive Criminal Thinking Relationship

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current study sought to determine whether short-term hostility mediated reactive criminal thinking (RCT) just as RCT mediates the past crime‒future crime relationship. Using the first four waves of data from the Pathways to Desistance study, a series of three causal mediation analyses were performed on all 1,354 (1,170 males, 184 females) members of the Pathways study. Findings from the first analysis revealed that while short-term hostility mediated the relationship between past and future RCT, it did not mediate the past proactive criminal thinking (PCT)‒future PCT relationship. The outcome of the second analysis revealed that the effect was specific to hostility in that an alternate affective state (depression) had no mediating effect on the past‒future RCT relationship. A third analysis generated support for a mediation-within-mediation effect whereby RCT mediated crime continuity and was, in turn, mediated by short-term hostility in a five-wave serial multiple mediation model.