Self-attitude change and deviant behavior

Abstract

For each of 22 essentially uncorrelated deviant acts the following hypothesis was tested: Among persons who report not having performed the act during a period prior to the first testing, regardless of initial level of self-derogation, individuals who report (a year later) at the second testing having performed the deviant act during the intervening year will have manifested significantly greater increases in self-rejecting attitudes over the same period than persons who report not having performed the act. Data were obtained from participants in a longitudinal study of junior high school students who responded to questionnaires at the first two testings. Self-attitudes were measured by scores on a self-derogation scale. Change in self-derogation from the first to the second testing was determined by expressing the later score as a deviation from the posttest-on-pretest regression line. Deviant behaviors were indicated by self-reports. The change score comparisons between persons who reported and did not report deviant responses at the later time were made separately for persons with initially low, medium, and high self-derogation scores respectively. The comparisons were in the hypothesized direction in all 66 (22 deviant acts X 3 initial selfderogation levels) instances. In 58 instances the results were significant. The strong support for the hypothesized association between deviant responses and increases in self-rejection is interpreted as congruent with the position that the genesis of negative self-attitudes is a common influence in the adoption of deviant responses in general.