This chapter suggests that delinquency conceals two distinct categories of individuals, each with a unique natural history and etiology: A small group engages in antisocial behavior of one sort or another at every life stage, whereas a larger group is antisocial only during adolescence. According to the theory of life-course-persistent antisocial behavior, children's neuropsychological problems interact cumulatively with their criminogenic environments across development, culminating m a pathological personality. According to the theory of adolescence-limited antisocial behavior, a contemporary maturity gap encourages teens to mimic antisocial behavior in ways that are normative and adjustive. There are marked individual differences in the stability of antisocial behavior. The chapter reviews the mysterious relationship between age and antisocial behavior. Some youths who refrain from antisocial behavior may, for some reason, not sense the maturity gap and therefore lack the hypothesized motivation for experimenting with crime.

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Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy.

A general theory of domain identification is used to describe achievement barriers still faced by women in advanced quantitative areas and by African Americans in school. The theory assumes that sustained school success requires identification with school and its subdomains; that societal pressures on these groups (e.g., economic disadvantage, gender roles) can frustrate this identification; and that in school domains where these groups are negatively stereotyped, those who have become domain identified face the further barrier of stereotype threat, the threat that others' judgments or their own actions will negatively stereotype them in the domain. Research shows that this threat dramatically depresses the standardized test performance of women and African Americans who are in the academic vanguard of their groups (offering a new interpretation of group differences in standardized test performance), that it causes disidentification with school, and that practices that reduce this threat can reduce these negative effects.

/pdf/a-threat-in-the-air-how-stereotypes-shape-intellectual-gysdupurbr.pdf

A Threat in the Air How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance

Academic motivation is discussed in terms of self-efficacy, an individual's judgments of his or her capabilities to perform given actions. After presenting an overview of self-efficacy theory, I contrast self-efficacy with related constructs (perceived control, outcome expectations, perceived value of outcomes, attributions, and self-concept) and discuss some efficacy research relevant to academic motivation. Studies of the effects of person variables (goal setting and information processing) and situation variables (models, attributional feedback, and rewards) on self-efficacy and motivation are reviewed. In conjunction with this discussion, I mention substantive issues that need to be addressed in the self-efficacy research and summarize evidence on the utility of self-efficacy for predicting motivational outcomes. Areas for future research are suggested.

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Self-Efficacy and Academic Motivation

This article offers objectification theory as a framework for understanding the experiential consequences of being female in a culture that sexually objectifies the female body. Objectification the...

Objectification Theory: Toward Understanding Women's Lived Experiences and Mental Health Risks:

Publisher Summary Central to the theoretical model of personal normative influences on altruism presented in this chapter is the idea that altruistic behavior is causally influenced by feelings of moral obligation to act on one's personally held norms. Research supporting this central tenet of the model has demonstrated associations between personal norms and behavior rather than causal relations. These associations are partly causal because the associations appear primarily in the presence of personality conditions conducive to norm activation and are absent when personality conditions are conducive to deactivation, and attributes of personal norms (e.g., centrality, stability, and intensity) relate to altruism singly or in combination, in ways predicted when the causal impact of anticipated moral costs on behavior is assumed. Studies show that variations in situational conditions conducive to activation of moral obligation also influence the relationship between personal norms and behavior. There is ample evidence that variables that foster movement through the activation process—according to the theoretical model—are themselves related to altruistic behavior (e.g., seriousness of need and uniqueness of responsibility). The study of how personal norms are related to altruism is a part of a larger enterprise—the investigation of attitude–behavior relations in general.

Normative Influences on Altruism

From the sociological point of view, adolescence traditionally has been described as a period of physical maturity and social immaturity. Adolescents reach physical adulthood before they are capable of functioning well in adult social roles. The disjunction between physical capabilities and socially allowed independence and power and the concurrent status ambiguities are viewed as stressful for the adolescent in modern Western society. It has been assumed that the need to disengage from parents during these years will result in high levels of rebellion and parent-child confl ict. Moving into Adolescence follows students as they make a major life course transition from childhood into early adolescence.

Moving into adolescence: The impact of pubertal change and school context.

This article examines the impact of experiencing several major life transitions simultaneously in early adolescence For many children, entry into the new life period of adolescence is marked by the transition from a relatively intimate elementary school setting into a more complex, impersonal junior high school environment This major shift in organizational context is often accompanied by dramatic changes in biology and social definition We hypothesized that transitions will be easier for children to cope with if the various adolescent changes come into focus at different stages rather than simultaneously In a longitudinal study conducted in a large Midwestern city, schoolchildren were followed from sixth into seventh grade in 2 different types of school systems The effect of multiple life changes (school transition, pubertal development, early dating behavior, residential mobility, family disruption) on students' self-esteem, academic grade-point average, and participation in extracurricular activities was analyzed The results identify children who are forced to cope with several life transitions concurrently as a group at risk Theoretical implications are discussed, with development of the notion that individuals need an "arena of comfort" in at least some spheres of their lives

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1130616.pdf

The impact of cumulative change in early adolescence.

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate whether adolescence is a period of disturbance for the child's self-image and, if so, at what age of adolescence and under what social conditions the disturbance is greatest. Several dimensions of the self-image were measured among 1,917 urban school children in grades three through twelve. Compared to children in the eight to eleven age group, the early adolescents, particularly those between twelve and thirteen, were shown to exhibit heightened self-consciousness, greater instability of the self-image, slightly lower self-esteem, and a less favorable view of the opinions held of them by significant others. Evidence is presented suggesting that the child's environment may have a stronger effect than his age in producing such changes. Children who had entered junior high school appeared more disturbed along these lines than their age-peers still in elementary school.

Disturbance in the self-image at adolescence.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the movement into early adolescence upon the self-esteem of children. Which children are most vulnerable to this role-transition and what is the effect of changes in school environment, pubertal development, and social behavior'? With repeated survey interviews and nurses' measurements, 798 school children were followed from sixth into seventh grade in two different types of school systems. Findings indicate that, in seventh grade, white adolescent girls who have entered the new environment of junior high school appear to be at a disadvantage in comparison both to boys in general and to girls who do not have to change schools. Among the girls, the ones with lowest self-esteem appear to be those who have recently experienced multiple changes, that is, who have changed schools, have reached puberty, and who have also started to "date." Among boys, in contrast, early pubertal development is an advantage for self-esteem. These data thus demonstrate the way in which coping with a major role transition can be significantly affected by environmental context, level of biological development, and social behavior.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2094719

Roberta G. Simmons

Papers

Moving into adolescence: The impact of pubertal change and school context.

The impact of cumulative change in early adolescence.

Disturbance in the self-image at adolescence.

Entry into early adolescence: the impact of school structure, puberty, and early dating on self-esteem.

The Adjustment of Early Adolescents to School Transitions