Civilization and its discontented: Links between youth victimization, beliefs about government, and political participation across seven American presidencies.

Abstract

Promoting trust in public officials and active political engagement is vital to sustaining a wellfunctioning democracy. Developmental psychologists propose that youths' beliefs about government and participation in politics are rooted in personal experiences within their communities. Previous studies have focused on how positive experiences within youths' families, schools, and communities facilitate greater social trust and political participation. However, less is known about how negative interpersonal experiences-such as criminal victimization-intersect with youths' beliefs about the trustworthiness, competence, and knowledge of government officials, and their participation in political activity. Using data from 39 waves of the Monitoring the Future study, the current study examined associations among youth victimization, beliefs about government, and participation in various political activities. Adolescents (N ϭ 109,574; 50.9% female) enrolled in 12th grade across the United States reported on whether they had experienced various types of victimization during the previous year, their beliefs about government, and their participation in multiple forms of political activity. Adolescents who reported more frequent victimization experiences endorsed significantly greater discontent with government and were significantly more engaged in various forms of political activity. The magnitude and direction of these effects were generally consistent across different types of victimization, different demographic subgroups of youth, and different sociohistorical periods. Findings are interpreted from a social contract theory perspective, followed by a discussion of implications for building psychological theory and informing public policy.

Historical Trends in Concerns About Social Issues Across Four Decades Among U.S. Adolescents

“…Age differences in youths' understanding of social issues are consistent with age-related advances in youths' social cognitive development, including increased abilities to reason about social issues, manage abstract concepts, and approach social problems from different perspectives (Flanagan et al, 2014;Smetana, 2006). Social-cognitive and ecological theories also highlight that these beliefs are connected with youths' personal experiences within their families and communities and may be influenced by macrolevel systems including the current social, political, and historical period (Flanagan & Tucker, 1999;Oosterhoff, Kaplow, Layne, & Pynoos, 2018;Wray-Lake et al, 2010).…”

Political Engagement and Crime Victimization: A Causal Analysis

“…That is, exposure to victimization affects engagement (whether positively or negatively), making this a causal relationship. These conclusions have been made at both the individual (Bateson, 2012;Blattman, 2009;Oosterhoff et al, 2018;Brooks, 2014) and community level (Trelles & Carreras, 2012;Ley, 2017;Ley, 2018). However, in terms of individual-level arguments, the majority of the literature arguing for this causal relationship uses singleyear, cross-sectional data.…”

“…Unfortunately, such an approach is misleading, as without temporal variation and tracking of the same individuals, it is difficult to assert a true, individual-level causal relationship. Only certain authors, such as Oosterhoff, Kaplow, Layne & Pynoos (2018), have been able to actually trace individual level data to isolate the effects of victimization on engagement 2 . Thus, there is limited evidence of the causal nature of this relationship.…”

Similarities and Differences in Adolescents’ Organized and Civic Activity Networks among Rural and Non-Rural Youth

“…For instance, various forms of community service are often incorporated into other forms of activity involvement, such as church (e.g., Kraus, 2009), sports (e.g., Kay and Bradbury, 2009), clubs, arts, and music (e.g., Shelly, 2011). Participating in community service tends to be moderately correlated with participation in other organized activities (Oosterhoff et al, 2018) and some evidence indicates that community service -but not other forms of civic and organized activities-is bidirectionally associated with organized activity involvement over time (Oosterhoff et al, 2017b). Community service may therefore have a higher expected influence and be more central to youth's activity networks in that it will be more strongly and widely connected to other forms of involvement compared to other activities.…”