THE RESPONSE OF ADOLESCENT OFFENDERS TO NONVERBAL EMOTION DISPLAYS
Abstract
Our internal emotional states and experiencing are often consciously or unintentionally communicated to others via facial expressions, vocal qualities, and bodily movements. It has been clearly demonstrated that such nonverbal expressive behaviors are an important vehicle of interpersonal communication, which exert potent effects on social interactions. The present study examined the relationship between the nature of incarcerated adolescent offenders' criminal offenses and their personality characteristics to their performance on several measures of emotion awareness. This was done to examine the general hypothesis that individuals who habitually behave in antisocial ways may do so out of some insensitivity to, or idiosyncractic utilization of, the nonverbal emotionally expressive displays exhibited by others. It was specifically hypothesized that (1)adolescent offenders with a history of criminal offenses directed toward a physically present victim, and (2)adolescent offenders who obtained higher scores on a personality inventory assessing psychopathic characteristics would (a)attend less to the visual cues of emotion exhibited by others, (b)attend less to the vocal cues of emotion exhibited by others, (c)exhibit a lowered preference for affective information as a solution strategy in a problem solving situation, and (d)be less accurate in classifying the emotion displays exhibited by others, relative to adolescent offenders with no arrest history of victim directed offenses and adolescent offenders with lower scores on the personality inventory. It was also hypothesized that three of the emotion awareness variables (attention to visual cues, attention to vocal cues, and preference for affective cues) would be positively intercorrelated, but independent of the forth emotion awareness variable, accuracy in classifying emotion displays. Significant differences were found in the hypothesized direction between adolescent offenders scoring high and low on the personality measure of psychopathy in terms of three of the four emotion awareness variables (attention to visual cues of emotion, attention to vocal cues of emotion, and preference for affective cues). These differences were found to be not due to differences in age, verbal intelligence, or racial composition between the two groups. Contrary to the hypotheses, however, no significant differences were found on any of the emotion awareness variables with respect to the nature of the subjects' criminal offenses. Significant positive intercorrelations were obtained among three of the emotion awareness variables. These intercorrelations were independent of the age and intelligence of the subjects, and independent of their accuracy of classifying emotion displays. These results were discussed in terms of providing modest support for the longstanding clinical observation that antisocial behaving individuals may respond atypically to the nonverbal emotion displays exhibited by others.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy
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