Crime In Effect To Callous-Unemotional Traits

This study was completed over adolescents’ and group crime in effect to callous-unemotional traits, such as being a leader in a crime or participating in gang activity. The experimenters believe that callous-unemotional traits are associated with adolescent crimes. The experiments were completed with adolescents of different backgrounds who were justice-involved. The results were that callous-unemotional traits were related to performing crimes in groups and gang activity. The experiments were focused on age, intelligence, impulse control, and culture. The results of these experiments help with understanding why groups commit acts and how to reduce the influence of these activities with treatments. The study consisted of one thousand, one hundred and sixteen young boys, including boys from the Crossroads study, a previous study completed. All of the participants were from juvenile centers in California, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana. To qualify to participate, the boys had to be first time offenders, between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, and have eligible charges committed, such as battery, theft, or vandalism. The average age of the participants was fifteen, including also half white and almost forty percent black. The rest were non-Latino. The average Intelligence of the boys was under-average. Before the experiment, the Institutional Review Board contacted parents of the juveniles over the phone, and asked if their child would participate. Fifty dollars were given to the children for their participation. The interviews were conducted anywhere convenient to the youth, such as their home or a nearby public place. Laptops were used, and the interviewers read all of the questions out loud to the participant, to cause less confusion. Introductory analyses were completed to see if the study variables were able to be tested. Next, callous-unemotional traits were tested along with impulse control, age, IQ, and race and ethnicity. The experiment took place with the use of questioning and interviewing the children in the different sections of questions and at the place of their choice, such as a library or home. The key predictors and control variables for the participants were used to create tests on three categories, which were callous-unemotional traits, impulse control, and lifetime offending. For callous-unemotional traits, an instrument was used to indicate how accurate twenty-four statements were about emotion. The test indicated if the statements were not true or definitely true. The statements were either worded negatively or positively emotional. An eight-item test measured impulse control. It was rated on a scale from true to false. One meant false and five meant true; lower scores related to anti--social behavior. The history of lifetime offending was tested on twenty-four types of crime where the participant would answer yes or …show more content…
Participants were required to state if their crime that they became part previous to the experiment was committed as a group or individual. Over half of the participants said they committed the crime with others. Under forty percent of the participants committed their crime as an individual. Next, participants reported if they had ever committed a crime with others. Only forty-five percent of the boys said they had. Only five percent of the participants said they were in a gang in the past six months. The dependent variable in these experiments were the section of the questions, and the independent variable was the types of questions asked for each group of