Abstract
Scholars have become increasingly interested in how social environments condition the relationships between individual risk-factors and adolescent behavior. An appreciable portion of this literature is concerned with the relationship between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhood settings. The present article builds upon this growing body of research by considering the more nuanced pathways through which neighborhood disadvantage shapes the development of impulsivity and provides a situational context for impulsive tendencies to manifest in violent and aggressive behaviors. Using a sample of 12,935 adolescent from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) (mean age = 15.3, 51% female; 20% Black, 17% Hispanic), we demonstrate the extent to which variation in the association between impulsivity and delinquency across neighborhoods can be attributed to (1) differences in mean-levels of impulsivity and violence and (2) differences in coefficients across neighborhoods. The results of a series of multivariate regression models indicate that impulsivity is positively associated with self-reported violence, and that this relationship is strongest among youth living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. The moderating effect of neighborhood disadvantage can be attributed primarily to the stronger effect of impulsivity on violence in these areas, while differences in average levels of violence and impulsivity account for a smaller, yet nontrivial portion of the observed relationship. These results indicate that the differential effect of impulsivity on violence can be attributed to both developmental processes that lead to the greater concentration of violent and impulsive adolescents in economically deprived neighborhoods as well as the greater likelihood of impulsive adolescents engaging in violence when they reside in economically disadvantaged communities.
Highlights
Over the past two decades, research has increasingly highlighted the importance of social context for adolescent development and well-being
The purpose of the current study is to examine the more nuanced model of impulsivity, neighborhood disadvantage, and self-reported violence presented in Fig. 2 among a nationally representative sample of American adolescents
Consistent with some prior research (e.g., Jones and Lynam 2009; Lynam et al 2000; Meier et al 2008; Vogel 2016), impulsivity was associated with higher levels of offending, and neighborhood disadvantage moderated this association, such that effect of impulsivity on offending was amplified at higher levels of neighborhood disadvantage
Summary
Over the past two decades, research has increasingly highlighted the importance of social context for adolescent development and well-being. Much of this research has focused on the ways in which school and neighborhood environments influence outcomes like school performance (Dotterer and Lowe 2011; Irvin et al 2011), mental health (Nair et al 2013), and delinquent behavior (Deutsch et al 2012; Vogel et al 2015). Scholarly attention has shifted to understanding the ways in which social environments condition the relationships between individual risk-factors and adolescent behavior, especially delinquent and violent conduct. This emerging perspective, referred to here as “person-context research”, assumes that behavioral outcomes are not the. The general consensus is that dispositional risk factors, such as impulsivity or low self-control, are contingent on the characteristics of broader ecological contexts, such as the school one attends or neighborhood in which one resides (e.g., Fine et al 2016; Lynam et al 2000; Vogel and Barton 2013; Zimmerman 2010)
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