Young criminals are driven by excitement and influenced by the crime they see around them

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who's familiar with books, movies, or television programs about juvenile delinquency (or who's known any juvenile delinquents, for that matter). As reported by the University of Portsmouth, February 24, 2020:

Young burglars are driven by a desire for excitement when they initially commit crime, new research from the University of Portsmouth has found.

The paper published today highlights the importance of positive emotion in the initial decisions to commit crime which drive the young person into habitual offending.

Researchers compared findings from younger (average age 20) with older, experienced residential burglars (average age 39) after they completed a ‘virtual burglary’ where participants use a simulated environment to choose and burgle a property. They were asked to ‘think aloud’ during the re-enactment and then were interviewed by researchers.

Participants were asked about the days and hours before the burglary to try and establish the processes that led them to be involved in the first place.

Dr Claire Nee, Reader in Forensic Psychology, who led the research, said: “It’s important to understand under what circumstances young people make that initial decision to commit a crime, so we can think about intervention. The role of emotion in driving the desire to commit crime is a much neglected area and our research indicates it could be key to stopping it in its tracks. The excitement drives the initial spate of offending, but skill and financial reward quickly take over resulting in habitual offending.

"What really struck me about the research is how young offenders can’t identify a clear initial decision to commit a burglary – it’s just part of the ‘flow’ of what they’re doing with their adolescent comrades."

The research shows that offenders tended to drift into crime rather than any distinct turning point. Offending was often considered an integral and almost inevitable part of participants’ lifestyles.

One young burglar said: “Like where I’m from… that’s what it’s like, it’s crime, like, that’s the norm.” An adult burglar expressed similar sentiments: “I was just born on the streets… that’s what people do.”

The research discovered a pattern which shows that initiation into burglary is linked originally to the desire for excitement and the ‘thrill’ of committing the offence, but this thrill reduces once the offender has repeatedly committed a crime.

Having completed one burglary, offenders became motivated by the experience of making quick, easy money. One participant said: “I just had so much money and I was thinking, wow, is this what 10 minutes of work is.”

Dr Nee said: “It is fascinating to explore the stages of a criminal’s career, so we can see what motivates them at the start, what continues to motivate them, and how we might be able to intervene.”

The paper is published in the British Journal of Criminology.

Click on the link for the original article Expertise, Emotion and Specialization in the Development of Persistent Burglary by Marco Otte, Zarah Vernham, Jean-Louis Van Gelder, Claire Nee, and Amy Meenaghan.

Drinking young leads to dying young

Now that scientists have discovered that drinking alcohol at an early age can lead to an early death, don't be surprised if they announce similar discoveries about the early practice of smoking, drug use, or other bad habits. The following article abounds in euphemisms: "alcohol abuse disorder;" "alcohol use disorder;" "abuse sufferers;" "alcohol addiction." I'm surprised "alcohol dependency" and "alcohol-dependent" weren't included. The term "drunkenness" is mentioned, which is far more honest. The Bible never uses such euphemisms, or even terms such as "alcoholism" or "alcoholic"--terms popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous in an effort to relabel a sin as a disease--but uses such terms as "drunkenness," and says that "drunkards" will not inherit the Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 6:10). I'm not going to mention the innumerate use of the word "DOUBLES" in the original Daily Mail headline.

As reported by Alexandra Thompson in the London Daily Mail, June 9, 2017 (bold in original):

Getting drunk before your 15th birthday nearly doubles your risk of an early death, new research reveals.

Those who get inebriated at a young age are 47 percent more likely to die prematurely, a study found.

Researchers believe early drinking may increase a person's risk of suffering a life-threatening alcohol abuse disorder in later life.

Lead author Dr Hui Hu from the University of Florida, said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Other experts add excessive alcohol-consumption at a young age can increase a person's 'risk-taking behavior' and lead to mental health issues.

How the study was carried out

Researchers from the University of Florida analyzed the drinking habits and death records of almost 15,000 adults, who were followed for three decades.

The researchers examined data from the early 1980s that asked the participants if they had ever been drunk and how old they were when it first occurred.

At the time of the interviews, most participants were aged between 18 and 44-years-old.

Key findings

Compared to study participants who said they never got drunk, those who did so at least once before they turned 15 were 47 percent more likely to die during the study period.

Getting drunk at 15 or older increased the risk of death during the study by 20 percent.

Some 61 percent of the study's participants said they had been drunk at some point, with around 13 percent of first-time cases occurring before they turned 15.

Of those who got drunk young, around 37 percent were suffering from an alcohol abuse disorder at the time of the interviews, compared to 11 percent of abuse sufferers who did not get intoxicated until they were older.

By the end of the study, 26 percent of those who got drunk young had died, compared to 23 percent of those who got drunk later and 19 percent who had never been inebriated.

Why early drinking is risky

Excessive drinking at a young age is thought to be linked to alcohol abuse in later life.

Dr Hu said: 'Early onset of drinking and drunkenness are associated with alcohol use disorders and therefore may play a role in elevated alcohol use disorder-related mortality rates.'

Yet alcohol addiction may not be the only factor contributing to young drinkers' early death risk.

Dr Hu said: 'We found that an estimated 21 percent of the total effects of early drunkenness were mediated through alcohol use disorders, suggesting that many other factors in addition to alcohol use disorders may play important roles.'

Dr Michael Criqui, a public health researcher at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, said: 'We know that alcohol abuse leads to earlier mortality, but it is also possible that earlier abuse reflects other genetic or environmental characteristics that lead to earlier mortality.'

Early drunkenness may point to other factors such as risk-taking behavior, mental health issues or a lack of social or economic support that influences health and longevity, noted Dr. Gregory Marcus, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

How to interpret the results

Dr Marcus said: 'No one should interpret these data to mean that their fate is sealed.

'On the contrary, these findings are useful exactly because they may help us identify those at risk so we can prevent these adverse outcomes.'

Yet Mr Joy Bohyun Jang of the institute for social research at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the study, added that the study demonstrates an early mortality risk exists even among people without alcohol addiction, which all drinkers should be aware of.

He said: 'Those with alcohol use disorders may receive attention to their alcohol use behaviors by practitioners or they themselves may be cautious about their alcohol use.

'But what this study tells us is that those without alcohol use disorder may need the same level of attention if they experience drunkenness early in their life.'

Girls are different from boys in their texting habits...

...with resulting differences in school performance. Once again, psychologists treat every example of obvious differences between males and females as if they've made a profound discovery.

As reported in a press release from the American Psychological Association, October 5, 2015:

WASHINGTON - Teenage girls who compulsively text are more likely than their male counterparts to do worse academically, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"It appears that it is the compulsive nature of texting, rather than sheer frequency, that is problematic," said lead researcher Kelly M. Lister-Landman, PhD, of Delaware County Community College. "Compulsive texting is more complex than frequency of texting. It involves trying and failing to cut back on texting, becoming defensive when challenged about the behavior, and feeling frustrated when one can't do it..."

...Girls do not text more frequently than do boys, but they appear to text for different purposes, Lister-Landman said. "Borrowing from what we know about Internet communication, prior research (e.g., Baron, 2004) has shown that boys use the Internet to convey information while girls use it for social interaction and to nurture relationships," she said. "Girls in this developmental stage also are more likely than boys to ruminate with others, or engage in obsessive, preoccupied thinking, across contexts. Therefore, it may be that the nature of the texts girls send and receive is more distracting, thus interfering with their academic adjustment."

Go here for full text of the original article.

Stupid young males tend to be oblivious to their surroundings while listening to headphones

As reported by Joan Delaney in The Epoch Times, February 20, 2012 (updated February 25, 2012):

The deaths of two headphone-wearing high school students who were struck by trains in separate incidents just hours apart last week brought home the dangers of being oblivious to surrounding sounds when walking near train tracks.

On Feb. 13 around 3:00 p.m., 16-year-old Jacob Hicks was hit by a train at a level crossing in Oshawa, Ont., while texting and listening to music on headphones. He died later in hospital.

The automated lights and bells at the crossing were active at the time, but police said the music Hicks was listening to was likely so loud it drowned out the warnings, according to media reports.

The same afternoon, 19-year-old Daniel McPherson was walking along the tracks in Leduc, south of Edmonton, when he was struck and killed by a freight train. He was also wearing headphones.

McPherson appeared not to hear the train’s squealing brakes and whistle as the driver tried desperately to alert him.

If a recent U.S. study is anything to go by, the tragic incidents demonstrate a growing problem, particularly among young people.

According to research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, the number of injuries and deaths in headphone-related collisions in the U.S. has increased dramatically in recent years—and the victims are mostly young males.

Between 2004 and 2011, the researchers reviewed 116 accidents in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones.

Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in the death of the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30.

Fifty-five percent of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains, and 29 percent of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the collision.

The researchers came to the conclusion that the increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to the rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones.

“Everybody is aware of the risk of cellphones and texting in automobiles, but I see more and more teens distracted with the latest devices and headphones in their ears,” said lead author Dr. Richard Lichenstein, associate professor of paediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“Unfortunately, as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases.”
Distraction, Sensory Deprivation

The researchers noted two likely phenomena associated with the injuries and deaths: distraction and sensory deprivation.

The distraction caused by the use of electronic devices has been dubbed “inattentional blindness,” in which an individual fails to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because his attention is otherwise engaged.

In cases of headphone-wearing pedestrians being struck by trains or vehicles, the distraction is intensified by sensory deprivation—the pedestrian’s ability to hear warning signals is hampered by the sounds produced by the electronic device and headphones.

The Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction on the part of the researchers are positively dazzling, especially when they attribute the accidents to "distraction and sensory deprivation." For those who may not have the scientific expertise to figure this out, it means that the stupid yutes have the volume turned up too loud, and they're not paying enough attention to their surroundings to notice oncoming trains.

These tragedies can be easily avoided by doing three things:
1/ Turn down the volume;
2/ Look up and around and show some awareness of your surroundings;
3/ Remember that railroad tracks are there for the movement of trains, and aren't intended as paths for pedestrians.

Teenage boys eat a lot

This study from the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development won't surprise anyone who's ever known or been a teenage boy. I just wish I still had the metabolism I had then.

As reported by Reuters, June 15, 2010:

NEW YORK - Parents of teenage boys often believe they are being eaten out of house and home. A new study suggests they’re right.

In a lunch-buffet experiment involving 200 kids ages 8 to 17, researchers found that boys routinely ate more compared with girls their own age. But boys in their mid-teens were the most ravenous of all — downing an average of nearly 2,000 lunchtime calories.

The pattern makes sense, given that boys usually hit their growth spurt — putting on height and muscle mass — in late puberty, according to senior researcher Dr. Jack A. Yanovski, of the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Yet, while teenage boys have a storied reputation for packing it away, there had actually been little objective evidence that this is the norm.

“There’s a lot of folk wisdom that says boys can eat prodigious amounts, but we haven’t had much data,” Yanovski told Reuters Health.

To fill the gap, he and his colleagues had 204 8- to 17-year-old boys and girls come to a lunch buffet on two separate days. On one day, the kids were instructed to eat as much as they normally would during lunch; on the other day, they were told to eat as much as they wanted.

Overall, the researchers found, boys ate more than girls did at each stage of puberty. Prepubescent boys — generally between the ages of 8 and 10 — averaged nearly 1,300 lunchtime calories, versus 900 among prepubescent girls.

Girls showed the biggest increase in appetite during early- to mid-puberty, roughly between the ages of 10 and 13. Girls that age averaged almost 1,300 lunchtime calories, and that figure was only slightly higher among girls who were in late puberty.

That pattern is in line with girls’ development, Yanovski said, as they tend to have their most significant growth spurts in early- to mid-puberty.

Boys, on the other hand, tend to develop later. And their calorie needs appear to shoot up significantly in late puberty, or between the ages of 14 and 17.

While boys in this study showed little change in calorie intake between pre- and mid-puberty, their average lunchtime calorie intake reached nearly 2,000 calories in late puberty. Even for active children, those 2,000 calories would be most of their daily energy needs.

“They really can eat,” Yanovski noted.

For parents, he said, the findings offer an idea of what they can reasonably expect as far as their children’s calorie needs, and the family grocery bills, as kids get older.

Unpopular girls tend to be fatter...

...or is it that fat girls tend to be unpopular?

Teen girls' popularity predicts weight change, study shows
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney January 7, 2008 05:04 PM

Adolescent girls who placed themselves low on the ladder of popularity were more likely to gain weight later in their teen years than girls who saw themselves as having higher social standing, Boston-area researchers say...