The Social Development Model

This chapter presents an overview of the social development model (SDM)—a general theory of human behavior that integrates research on risk and protective factors into a coherent model. The goal of this synthesis is to provide more explanatory power than its component theories. This chapter first specifies the model constructs and their hypothesized relationships to prosocial and antisocial behaviors. It then provides a synthesis of what has been learned from empirical tests of social development hypotheses for predicting pro- and antisocial behaviors. This chapter also highlights interventions derived from the SDM and summarizes their impact on pro- and antisocial behaviors. Finally, the chapter concludes by presenting future directions for SDM-based research.