Comparison of Emotional Dispositions Between Street Gang and Non-Gang Prisoners

Abstract

Effectively recognizing, identifying, and utilizing emotional stimuli is essential for successful social interactions, with deficits in these robustly identified as risk factors for offending. Psychological understanding of street gang membership is limited, particularly surrounding emotional dispositions distinguishing street gang from non-gang offenders. This study examined how street gang members compare with non-gang offenders on trait emotional intelligence (TEI), antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), callous-unemotional traits, anger rumination, and aggression. Recruited through volunteer sampling, participants included 73 (44 street gang and 29 non-gang) male offenders incarcerated at a U.K. Category C prison. Participants completed seven questionnaires assessing emotional dispositions, social desirability, and, consistent with the Eurogang definition, street gang membership. To compare participants' demographics and identify the predictors of street gang membership, chi-square and discriminant function analyses were conducted. With a significant discriminant function, Λ = .80, χ(6) = 14.96, p = .021, high levels of ASPD, anger rumination, and aggression and low levels of TEI predict street gang membership. Compared with non-gang prisoners, street gang prisoners did not differ on callous-unemotional traits, age, or ethnicity. Results suggest that, compared with non-gang prisoners, street gang members were more likely to possess dysfunctional emotional dispositions. Findings from this research have important implications in terms of developing interventions for street gang membership. Specifically, this research supports the need for gang-specific early intervention and prevention programs, with emotion-focused components. Ideas for future research are discussed, including the identification of further sociocognitive, personality, and emotional traits distinguishing street gang from non-gang offenders.

Do Psychopathic Traits Distinguish Trajectories of Gang Membership?

“…Factor 1 (i.e., the Affective/Interpersonal facets), for example, includes several traits that have been associated with gang membership in the broader literature such as having a grandiose sense of self-worth (i.e., similar to self-centeredness), a lack of guilt (Carson, Wiley, & Esbensen, 2017;Esbensen, Peterson, Taylor, & Freng, 2010;Hagedorn, 1988;Matsuda, Melde, Taylor, Freng, & Esbensen, 2013;Melde & Esbensen, 2011, 2014Melde & Esbensen, 2011, 2014, callous/unemotional traits (Thornton et al, 2015), and low levels of empathy (Lenzi et al, 2015). Risk factors for gang membership also overlap with many Factor 2 traits such as stimulation seeking and impulsivity (Esbensen et al, 2010;Hennigan, Kolnick, Vindel, & Maxson, 2015), impersonal sexual behavior (Voisin et al, 2004), early antisocial behaviors (Klein & Maxson, 2006) and poor anger control (Mallion & Wood, 2018;Matsuda et al, 2013). Further complicating this debate, is research that finds that the link between gang membership and psychopathy may vary based on the unique factors (i.e., Affective/Interpersonal and Antisocial/Lifestyle) (Dmitrieva, Gibson, Steinberg, Piquero, & Fagan, 2014;Valdez, Kaplan, & Codina, 2000).…”

Rethinking How We View Gang Members: An Examination into Affective, Behavioral, and Mental Health Predictors of UK Gang-Involved Youth

“…Furthermore, the current study provides an empirical examination of emotional distress and guilt proneness specific to gang-involved adolescents. Our findings point to the importance of considering emotional adjustment and callous-unemotional traits among gang samples (Mallion and Wood, 2018). However, there are also limitations to our work.…”

“…To establish which factors were more likely to account for gang involvement, a discriminant function analysis was conducted. This was deemed the most appropriate method because it is robust when analyzing categorical variables with numerous predictors in studies with small sample sizes (Mallion and Wood, 2018; see Tabachnick and Fidell, 2013). For this analysis, we included anxiety, conduct problems, depression, emotional distress, guilt-proneness, moral disengagement, rumination, and violence exposure as predictors in a single block.…”

“…All were state-funded: one was a mainstream secondary school for ages 11–18 years ( n = 44), one was a college for ages 16–19 years ( n = 23), and the third was a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU) for ages 11–16 years ( n = 24), who were experiencing a range of difficulties, including social, emotional, and behavioral problems and permanent exclusion from mainstream schools. Consistent with sample sizes from previous gang research (Mallion and Wood, 2018) and with young people in secondary schools (Pearce et al, 2016), 91 participants with a mean age of 14.93 ( SD = 1.52, range = 13–19 years) took part. A total of 62 per cent identified as non-gang youth ( n = 56), 35 per cent as gang-involved ( n = 32), and 3 per cent had unspecified status ( n = 3).…”

“…It is therefore unsurprising that behavioral disorders, including conduct problems mediate the relationship between gang membership and antisocial behavior (DeLisi et al, 2019). Equally, some authors further note how higher levels of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) distinguish gang members from non-gang members (Mallion and Wood, 2018). Research examining adolescent indicators of ASPD in adulthood (characterized by emotion dysregulation, unpredictable and heightened emotional experiences, low empathy, and engagement in violence, (American Psychiatric Association (APA), 2013; Howard, 2015; Mallion, 2017) identifies how individuals diagnosed with conduct disorder (CD) in adolescence are more likely to develop ASPD in adulthood and engage in higher levels of crime and violence (Loeber et al, 2006).…”