NCJ Number
203846
Journal
Aggression and Violent Behavior Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Dated: January-February 2004 Pages: 75-104
Date Published
January 2004
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the friendships of children and adolescents that engage in antisocial behavior.
Abstract
Three indices are used in research on children and adolescents that engage in antisocial behaviors: aggression, social rejection, and delinquency. Although research in these indices remains independent of each other, a common focus has been to examine peer influence on antisocial behavior. Researchers are interested in peer influences in the context of friendship because friendships are special and voluntary close relationships, which have a major impact on development. This review provides an examination of the friendships of children and adolescents that engage in antisocial behavior. The review discusses the concepts of aggression, rejection, and delinquency; provides a complete rationale for examining friendships of children with antisocial behaviors; discusses the mechanisms through which friendships are hypothesized to influence antisocial behaviors; and applies the distinction of friendship across the indices of aggression, sociometric rejection, and delinquency. The results show that, although rejected children have fewer friends than aggressive children and delinquent adolescents, friendships with peers that engage in antisocial behaviors were found to increase one’s own antisocial status across all three indices. The research suggests the importance of nonschool friendships and of nonstructured activities for delinquents. Although aggressive and delinquent children were often friends with others that engaged in these behaviors, rejected children selected friends based not on similarity, but on availability, and were often friends with younger or cross-gender peers. Although research examining positive features of aggressive, rejected, and delinquent children’s friendship quality reported mixed results, the friendships of children of all three antisocial behavior indices were reported as high in friendship conflict. Research examining the role of friendships during the transition from childhood antisocial behaviors to delinquency is needed. 1 table, 96 references