Antisocial Cognition and Peer Delinquency in Early to Middle Adolescence: Testing for Reciprocity

The purpose of this study was to test the cross-lagged association between peer delinquency and antisocial cognition in a group of early to middle adolescent respondents assessed once a year for a period of 5 years. Peer delinquency was operationalized as the proportion of friends participants believed engaged in various forms of criminality within the past year after controlling for their own level of delinquent behavior. Applying a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to data obtained from a sample of 1,635 youth (758 males, 877 females) revealed the presence of bidirectional associations between peer delinquency and moral neutralization and between peer delinquency and cognitive impulsivity in three out of four instances each and a unidirectional association in the fourth. These findings support the notion that peer delinquency not only contributes to antisocial cognition but is shaped by it as well.