Moderation of the relationship between hostility and offending: is social support a protective factor?

ABSTRACT

Hostility has been identified as a risk factor in predicting offending. Some research has conceptualized hostility as a facet of mental health. One factor that has been identified to be protective against the effects of mental health on behavioral outcomes is social support. Despite this, prior research has not considered social support in this manner in moderating the relationship between hostility and offending. This study utilized data from all 11 waves of the Pathways to Desistance study. Mixed-effects regression models were used to test for the direct effects of hostility on offending outcomes and determine whether social support moderated these relationships. Results indicated that greater hostility predicted increased offending variety for both outcomes. Lower levels of social support also predicted increased offending scores for both outcomes. No significant moderation effect was observed for either offending outcome. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Social support
• hostility
• offending

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Preliminary analyses examined multicollinearity of social support and hostility on the offending variety variables. For both aggressive offending variety and general offending variety, variance inflation factor scores of ‘1’ for all variables indicated that multicollinearity was not an issue. High tolerance scores were also obtained for each predictor variable when regressed on the other independent variables (Social support = .90; Hostility = .83), again indicating that multicollinearity is likely not an issue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Wojciechowski

Thomas Wojciechowski is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. He earned his PhD in Sociology from the University of Florida in 2018. His research focuses on life-course criminology, mental health, substance use, violent offending, and evaluation research.