Across different societies, non-dominant minority groups, compared to the dominant group, often exhibit higher rates of involvement in high-risk behaviors, such as smoking, drug and alcohol use, sexual risk behaviors, overeating, and unsafe driving habits. In turn, these behaviors have a well-documented impact on chronic disease, morbidity, and mortality. Previous studies have emphasized macro-structural or micro-agentic explanations for this phenomenon. Such explanations suffer from mirror-image shortcomings, such as, by emphasizing structural barriers, macro-level explanations leave out individual agency ("the over-socialized conception of the individual"), while micro-level theories give short shrift to structural constraints that prevent individuals from engaging in health-promoting behaviors ("the under-socialized conception of the individual"). Moreover, most current theories regard individuals as passive players who are influenced by the social environment or by psychological problems, or who make "bad" choices. The current paper develops an integrated theoretical framework that incorporates structural inequalities while leaving intact the role of individual agency. According to the social resistance framework, power relations in society encourage members of non-dominant minority groups to actively engage in everyday resistance practices that include various unhealthy behaviors. The paper develops propositions from which testable hypotheses can be generated, and discusses the implications and contributions of the social resistance framework.

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Non-dominant minorities, compared with majority groups, often have greater engagement in risky and delinquent behaviours. This study develops an innovative theoretical model for understanding risky/delinquent behaviour among non-dominant groups based on the social resistance framework, which suggests that power relations within society bring non-dominant minorities to actively engage in various forms of everyday resistance that can include delinquent behaviours. We tested this model on traffic violations, surveying 1,060 non-dominant and majority drivers in Israel. Structural equation models suggest that different mechanisms underlie delinquent behaviours in the two groups: social resistance plays a direct role in traffic violations among non-dominants, while, for the majority, procedural justice and non-commitment to the law have a stronger impact. Implications for understanding delinquent and risky behaviour and as an extension of the wellknown procedural justice model are discussed.

Our results suggest that there is no direct relationship between health expenditures and health outcomes after controlling for the other factors in the model. Our study enhances our understanding of the conceptual and theoretical links between corruption and health outcomes in a population, including factors that may mediate how corruption can affect health outcomes.

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These preliminary results supported the framework and suggested that social resistance might play a meaningful role in risky and unhealthy behaviors of nondominant minorities, and should be taken into account when trying to reduce health disparities.

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