Jenny Phan

 

Training Track: Clinical

Lab: Parents and Children Coping Together (PACCT) Lab

Advisors: Noni Gaylord-Harden, Ph.D.

Office: Coffey Hall 248

Stress and coping in urban communities of color, protective and resilience factors for youth, families and communities of color, increasing access to mental health care for underserved populations

 

Examining the Pathologic Adaptation Model of Community Violence Exposure in Adolescent Offenders: The Moderating and Mediating Effects of Moral Disengagement

 

Research has consistently observed a strong relation between violence exposure and externalizing behaviors such as participation in delinquent behaviors. On the other hand, the association between exposure to violence and internalizing symptoms has been inconsistent, with some studies noting a curvilinear relationship (Gaylord-Harden, Cunningham, & Zelencik, 2011). Youth who experience exposure to community violence may experience desensitization to these chronic experiences. One model that provides a framework for desensitization to violence is the pathologic adaptation model (Ng-Mak, Salzinger, Feldman, & Stueve, 2002) which proposes that desensitization occurs through two pathways: 1) the normalization pathway, which involves a positive association between delinquency and community violence exposure, and 2) the distress pathway, which involves an increase in emotional distress in reaction to community violence exposure (Ng-Mak et al., 2002). Further, moral disengagement, which refers to processes such as moral justification, euphemistic labelling, advantageous comparison, displacement of responsibility, diffusion of responsibility, distortion of consequences, attributions of blame and dehumanization, has been proposed as a construct to explain the relation between exposure to community violence and desensitization (Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara and Pastorelli, 1996). The overall purpose of the current study was to test the pathologic adaptation model in a sample of adolescent offenders and examine the role of moral disengagement in these pathways. The current study examined competing models of moral disengagement as a mediator and moderator in the distress and normalization pathways in a sample of 1,170 serious male adolescent offenders (M=16.05, SD=1.16) from the Pathways to Desistance Study (Schubert et al., 2004). Mediation and moderation models were tested using PROCESS macro version 3 bootstrapping procedure in SPSS (Hayes, 2018). Results from the current study revealed that experiencing direct victimization at baseline was positively and significantly associated with moral disengagement at 6 months, while witnessing violence at baseline was negatively and positively associated with moral disengagement at 6 months. In addition, moral disengagement was a significant mediator of the association between exposure to community violence (witnessing and direct victimization) at baseline and depressive symptoms at 12 months. Specifically, higher levels of violence exposure at baseline predicted higher levels of moral disengagement at 6 months, which in turn, predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms at 12 months. In addition, results revealed that moral disengagement moderated the relation between witnessing violence at baseline and self-reported offending at 12 months, but not between violence victimization at baseline and self-reported offending at 12 months. Witnessing violence significantly and positively predicted higher self-reported offending for individuals who were moderate to high in moral disengagement, but not for individuals low in moral disengagement. Future work examining the associations among exposure to community violence, moral disengagement, depressive symptoms, and externalizing behaviors is warranted within community samples.

 

Noni Gaylord-Harden, Ph.D.; James Garbarino, Ph.D.