Social Skills Differences in Aggressive and Non-Aggressive Male Young Offenders within an Unfamiliar Social Situation

Abstract

Forty male young offenders categorized as ‘aggressive’ or ‘non-aggressive’ according to criminal records, were filmed in conversation with an unknown prison officer on two occasions. Independent observers, blind to the offender's category, rated the aggressive subjects as having significantly poorer social skills than non-aggressive subjects, but only during subjects’ first conversation with the officer, i.e. within a novel, unfamiliar social situation. This finding has implications for the treatment of ‘aggressive’ individuals as it may be interpreted as evidence of their responding inappropriately (e.g. becoming withdrawn or verbally abusive) because they perceive ambiguous situations as threatening. It also might explain the recent finding from prison violence literature that inexperienced prison officers are more likely to become involved in violent incidents, because they are perceived by aggressive prisoners as ‘ambiguous’.