The purpose of this study was
to determine whether childhood animal cruelty is primarily a feature of family
context or of externalizing behavior.
Twenty measures of family context and
proactive (fearlessness) and reactive (disinhibition) externalizing behavior
were correlated with the retrospective accounts of childhood animal cruelty
provided by 1,354 adjudicated delinquents. A cross-sectional analysis revealed
that all 20 family context, proactive externalizing, and reactive externalizing
variables correlated significantly with animal cruelty.
Prospective analyses
showed that when the animal cruelty variable was included in a regression
equation with the 10 family context variables (parental arguing and fighting,
parental drug use, parental hostility, and parental knowledge and monitoring of
offspring behavior) or in a regression equation with the five reactive
externalizing variables (interpersonal hostility, secondary psychopathy, weak
impulse control, weak suppression of aggression, and short time horizon), it
continued to predict future violent and income (property + drug) offending.
The
animal cruelty variable no longer predicted offending, however, when included
in a regression equation with the five proactive externalizing variables (early
onset behavioral problems, primary psychopathy, moral disengagement, positive
outcome expectancies for crime, and lack of consideration for others).
These
findings suggest that while animal cruelty correlates with a wide range of
family context and externalizing variables, it may serve as a marker of violent
and nonviolent offending by virtue of its position on the proactive
subdimension of the externalizing spectrum.
Purchase full article at: http://goo.gl/4vUWkW
By:
- 1Kutztown University, PA, USA walters@kutztown.edu.
- 2Kutztown University, PA, USA.
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