Cultural Differences in Adolescents’ Explanations of Juvenile Delinquency

Abstract

Lay explanations for juvenile delinquency given by Australian adolescents from either collectivist or individualist cultural backgrounds were examined. After controlling for socioeconomic and demographic variables, differences were found between the groups, with the individualistic group tending to emphasize more individual-oriented explanations. These results are consistent with previous work on culture and attributional style.

South African Adolescents' Explanations for Juvenile Delinquency

“…Three of the items that were more highly endorsed by the Black respondents were of an internal nature and certainly not consistent with the hypothesis that the Black group would use more externally orientated explanations. However, the fact that the Black group rated the item 'they cannot tell people how they are feeling' as being more important than did the White group is consistent with the previous Australian finding that the collectivist respondents endorsed it more than the individualistic group (Tyson & Hubert, 2002). Why this should be the case, however, is not at all clear and further investigation is needed to identify what underlies this difference.…”

“…The results relating to the two internal explanations that were more highly endorsed by the White respondents are consistent with previous findings. In the Australian study, these two items -'they are bored' and 'they enjoy the excitement and kicks of breaking the law' -were more strongly endorsed by the respondents who identified with an individualistic culture (Tyson & Hubert, 2002), and boredom and excitement were the two causes most frequently cited by Pfeffer et al (1996) British participants. For the Black group, two of the five explanations that were more strongly endorsed are clearly external ones, viz 'they feel that it is unfair that some people have more money than others' and 'they come from poor families'.…”

“…This was followed by Deprivation In order to examine differences between the Black and White groups, the analysis was done at an item level, rather than using the factor scores, in order to provide more precise information and in line with previous research in this area (e.g. Furnham & Henderson, 1983;Tyson & Hubert, 2002). Prior to performing these analyses, tests were conducted to ascertain whether the two groups differed in terms of age, gender or close contact with people who had been in trouble with the law, as these variables have previously been shown to influence explanations (Tyson & Hubert, 2000).…”

“…Although there appears to be broad agreement on the underlying causes of crime, the degree of endorsement of the different explanations varies as a function of variables such as age (Banks et al, 1975;Fumham & Henderson, 1983;Hollins & Howells, 1987;Reuterrnan, 1978;Reuterrnan & Durbin, 1988;Sagatum, 1991;Tyson & Hubert, 2000), gender (Abrams et al, 1987;Fumham & Henderson, 1983;Hollins & Howells, 1987;Reuterrnan, 1978;Tyson & Hubert, 2000), political affiliation (Furnham & Henderson, 1983), location of residence (Abrams et al, 1987;Tyson & Hubert, 2000), culture (Pfeffer, Cole & Dada, 1996, 1998Tyson & Hubert, 2002) and knowing someone who has been in trouble with the police (Tyson & Hubert, 2000). However, the differences noted are not necessarily consistent across countries.…”

Hopelessness, individualism, collectivism, and substance use among young rural-to-urban migrants in China

“…Regarding the impact of cultural orientation on substance use, existing evidence tends to show that collectivistic orientation is a protective factor, whereas individualistic orientation is a risk factor (Johnson, 2007 ; Le, Goebert, & Wallen, 2009 ; Lin, Wu, & Detels, 2011 ; Sue, Zane, & Ito, 1979 ). There may be multiple mechanisms through which cultural orientation can influence substance use, such as parental monitoring (Tyson & Hubert, 2002 , 2003 ; Wong, Klingle, & Price, 2004 ) and peer affiliation (Le et al, 2009 ).…”