Sanctions, short‐term mindsets, and delinquency: Reverse causality in a sample of high school youth

Abstract

Purpose. We question the commonly assumed view of a fixed causal ordering between self-control, delinquency, and sanctions and test the hypothesis that experiencing sanctions may reduce levels of self-control, thereby increasing the risk of future delinquent behaviour. As a subsidiary goal, we argue for a parsimonious view of selfcontrol that is limited to its key components, risk-taking, and impulsivity.Methods. We use three waves of data from the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood into Adulthood (z-proso), an ongoing prospective longitudinal study of Swiss urban youth (N = 1,197), and include police contacts and school sanctions as predictors of delinquency. We test our hypothesis using path analysis and control for a series of potential confounders, including prior levels of self-control and earlier delinquency.Results. In line with our hypothesis, the results indicate that sanctioning reduces levels of self-control, net of prior levels of self-control, and earlier delinquency and that selfcontrol mediates the relation between sanctioning and subsequent delinquency.Conclusions. We conclude that the relation between self-control and crime may be birather than unidirectional with sanctions reducing levels of self-control, which in turn contributes to criminal behaviour. Implications for theory are discussed.Short-sightedness, or the lack of consideration of delayed consequences, pervades thinking about crime and criminal justice. It is reflected by several dispositions related to crime, including its most established individual-level correlate, self-control (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990), and is also implied in the principal theory of punishment, deterrence. Both self-control and deterrence theory are premised on the belief that crime results from a failure to consider its costs, which tend to be delayed compared with its benefits (Nagin & Pogarsky, 2004). Whereas self-control theory views this failure as a relatively stable individual propensity, deterrence theory assumes that punishment can motivate offenders to abstain from crime. Both perspectives dictate a fixed causal ordering ofThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The Co-development of Friends’ Delinquency with Adolescents’ Delinquency and Short-term Mindsets: The Moderating Role of Co-Offending

“…Answer categories ranged from “fully untrue” (=1) to “fully true” (=4). This sub-scale has been validated in previous studies (Van Gelder et al 2018 , 2020 ). Mean scores were computed from the items on the scale.…”

Personality pathways to aggression: Testing a trait‐state model using immersive technology

“…These constructs coincide in their explanation of the choice for crime in terms of a failure to consider the longer term consequences of one's actions or the tendency to deliberately devalue them. Despite important differences between them, they are all reflective of a short‐term mindset (see Van Gelder et al., 2020). The personality approach taken in the article is by no means at odds with this view or negates the importance of short‐term mindsets in crime causation, but it extends it by demonstrating that other dispositions are also related to aggressive conduct and, importantly, do so for different reasons.…”

Beyond the Situation: Hanging Out with Peers now is Associated with Short-Term Mindsets Later

“…In this article, we advocate for this theoretical shift and hypothesize that frequent UUS increases short-term mindsets in adolescents, and that it does so also beyond the immediate situation . We use ‘short-term mindsets’ as an umbrella term referring to concepts characterized by an increased focus on current versus future outcomes, including, but not limited to, impulsivity, sensation-seeking and low future orientation (Kübel et al, 2023 ; van Gelder et al, 2020 ). 1 We test our hypothesis by assessing whether individuals exhibit increased short-term mindsets after periods in which they have spent more time in UUS.…”

“…All of the aforementioned detrimental outcomes associated with UUS are also linked to short-term mindsets (de Ridder et al, 2012 ; Forrest et al, 2019 ; Pratt et al, 2014 ; van Gelder et al, 2018 ; Gelder et al, 2020 ; Vazsonyi et al, 2017 ). Research also demonstrates an increased focus on the present while with peers (e.g., Gilman et al, 2014 ; O’Brien et al, 2011 ).…”

“…Here, we propose that UUS promotes deviance through increasing short-term mindsets. The concept of short-term mindsets is similar to (low) self-control, but is informed by recent theory and findings (see Burt, 2020 , for review; see Kübel et al, 2023 ; van Gelder et al, 2020 , for further discussion). First, short-term mindsets narrows in on intertemporal decision-making tendencies.…”