Social Bias and the Development of Self-Control

Abstract

Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime has sparked a tremendous amount of research examining the link between levels of self-control and involvement in delinquent and criminal acts. Recently, studies testing this theory have begun to investigate the factors that are related to the development of self-control. The current study expands on this body of research by examining whether social bias, as measured by the ability to identify facial expressions, contributes to variation in self-control in a sample of children. Analysis of data drawn from the National Survey of Children revealed some evidence that children who had difficulty correctly identifying facial expressions depicting fear and happiness had lower levels of self-control, whereas errors in identifying faces expressing anger were related to higher levels of self-control. The authors discuss the need for Gottfredson and Hirschi's theory on the development of self-control to be expanded.