Why Aren't All Adolescents Delinquent?: Examining the Predictors, Pathways, and Processes Leading to Adolescent Delinquency (Abstention)

Abstract

Experimenting with minor delinquency and rule-breaking is common in adolescence to the extent that it has been considered by some to be typical or even adaptive adolescent behaviour. While much research has been dedicated to understanding why experimenting with delinquency is so prevalent during adolescence, this dissertation argues that in order to better understand the nature of adolescent delinquency, we need to know more about adolescents who do not engage in any delinquency or rule-breaking whatsoever (i.e., delinquency abstainers). Indeed, the results of this dissertation suggest that most adolescents do engage in at least one act of delinquency or rule-breaking (between 75 – 90%). Furthermore, 28% of young people engaged in minor deviancy when given a 5-minute window of opportunity to do so. However, despite its prevalence, findings from this dissertation suggest that minor delinquency may not be an adaptive response to the challenges of adolescence. First, we found that minor delinquency and rule-breaking are related to problems with identity formation, a key developmental task during adolescence. Second, we found that delinquency abstainers scored highly on the positive personal characteristics of conscientiousness, conformity, and honesty. And while some abstainers do appear to be more socially anxious than other adolescents and social anxiety was related to less time spent with peers, non-clinical levels of social anxiety seem to be more protective than problematic. Because, and third, during adolescence, most abstainers report having a best friend, spending time with their (less delinquent) peers, and having good quality relationships with their parents. In this dissertation, we also found that even a brief exposure to a previously unknown deviant peer can increase the amount of cheating behaviour. Therefore, our results suggest that deviant peer influence can play a role in own delinquency and rule-breaking, even if best friends are not likely to be delinquent. More research needs to be conducted to understand how these positive personal characteristics reported by abstaining adolescents may help them to avoid delinquent influence during a life-stage in which at least some exposure to delinquency and rule-breaking can be expected. However, fifth and importantly, not all abstainers reported positive personal characteristics. We also identified a smaller subgroup of maladaptive abstainers that had poorer primary school achievement and were unpopular in childhood. Following up these two subgroups of abstainers showed that the adaptive abstainers, with positive personal characteristics, were the most successful group in later adulthood. These adolescents reported the highest amount of satisfactory achievement of what we consider to be the main developmental tasks in life (i.e., satisfactory employment, accommodation, intimate relationships, and mental health) compared to all other adolescents. In conclusion, while this dissertation provides new evidence for a subgroup of adolescents that is not delinquent but likely has psychosocial problems that negatively affect their long-term well-being, the results also suggest that, for most adolescents, despite its high prevalence, experimenting with minor delinquency is not likely to be more adaptive than delinquency abstention.