A commentary on adolescent group violence.

In an effort to understand some of the group dynamic factors inherent in today's unprecedented increase in youth gang violence, the larger, well organized gangs of the 1960's, were compared with the contemporary crowd-like, small packs of street youths. A hypothesis is advanced that the combined processes of de-individuation and of group contagion underlie many of the violent acts, so rampant in inner-city areas. VioLit summary OBJECTIVE The aim of this study by Scheidlinger was to compare contemporary crowd-like small packs of street youths to the more stable and organized gangs of the 1960s. METHODOLOGY The author employed a non-experimental discussion, expressing his views on gangs of the 1960s and the present. His views were based on his contact with inner-city youth gangs of the 1960s through an outreach worker program conducted in New York City and, more recently, through onlooker information about violence committed by youth groups including stories from teens in a Bronx, New York hospital and from local schools. The author hypothesized that the combined processes of de-individuation and group contagion underlie the violent acts committed by contemporary youth groups. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION The author stated that today's youth gang phenomena in New York's inner-city are very different from those of the 1960s. Gangs of the 1960s were comprised of tightly-knit, stable, and organized youth groups which were engaged in intra and intergroup conflict. According to former New York school Chancellor Joseph Fernandez and other upright citizens with experience with the gangs of the 1960s, those gangs served as support for minority adolescents against controlling immigrant parents and discriminating community agents. When group anger and violence was present, the gangs targeted hostile authority figures or neighborhood groups, not innocent bystanders. Weapons used were fists and baseball bats. The gangs of the 1960s stand in clear contrast to the loosely-knit, short-term, crowd-like packs of contemporary youth gangs. The author stated that today adolescent peer groups in the inner-city areas are comprised of loosely-connected, small crowds or packs of boys over the age of fourteen. The author articulated that there is little shared group identity, no clear foci of interaction, and no stable objectives. Teenagers asked why they joined gangs today stated boredom, pressure from peers, and obtaining protection. The author concluded that three intertwined group psychological processes are at work in today's youth group violence: a crowd-like condition (a group's emotionalized state where reason and judgement give way to emotionality), de-individuation (a process in which a person is prevented by situational group factors from an awareness of himself as an individual separate from the group), and emotional contagion (an automatic spread of behavior and emotion from one person to another or to a whole group). Previous researchers have discussed both emotional contagion and de-individuation. Freud discussed how people see signs of emotions in others and thus fall into the same emotion. Greenacre observed that no one seems totally immune to emotional infection of a group. Blumer believed that contagion involved circular reaction in which group members fail to carefully examine the meanings of others' actions. Diener discussed two related components contained in de-individuation: a loss of self-awareness and of altered experiencing and disinhibited action. Zimbardo also discussed three components of de-individuation: the condition of de-individuation, the state of it, and positive de-individuation. The author summarized by stating that "de-individuation is a construct which links situational conditions to a state which is devoid of self-awareness and of self-regulation, thus allowing for the emergence of irrational and of automatically reactive group behavior" (p.10). Finally, the author concluded that because of the above, preventive intervention efforts are especially difficult. N1 - Call Number: F-196, AB-196 KW - Juvenile Offender KW - Juvenile Violence KW - Group Violence KW - Group Behavior KW - Gang Violence KW - Juvenile Gang KW - Personal Opinion Language: en