Melding theoretical perspectives: a gendered look at low-resting heart rate and developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior

Abstract

The biosocial theoretical perspective is a growing area within criminological theory; however, skepticism remains toward such new research endeavors. Uncertainty may come from a perceived lack of connection to existing theories of criminality and/or the apparent resources required in conducting biosocial research. Therefore, the aim of this study was twofold. First, by utilizing the public version of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data, this study provides an example of biosocial research that does not require the use of expensive laboratory equipment or restrictive datasets. Second, by utilizing a sample of 1629 individuals followed from age 13 to 29, a longitudinal latent class analysis was estimated to explore the relationship between low-resting heart rate and antisocial behavior for both males and females. Doing so, the current study integrates a well-researched correlate of biosocial criminology with mainstream criminological theories (i.e. developmental theories), while also employing a fairly novel approach to group-based trajectory modeling.

Keywords:

• biosocial criminology
• developmental criminology
• longitudinal latent class analysis (LLCA)
• low-resting heart rate
• gender
• delinquency
• Add Health

Acknowledgements

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Notes

1. The age range was limited due to well-established relationship between age and crime (Blumstein et al., 1988a, 1988b; Farrington, 1986; Moffitt, 1993a; Piquero et al., 2003). Restricting the sample to those youth who were in early adolescence allowed us to capture the ascent and (possibly) descent of delinquency for a large portion of the sample.

2. The number of items used to create variety scales of delinquency in each of these studies varied.