Emotion Recognition and Perceived Social Support in Young People Who Offend

Young people who offend appear stuck in a cycle of adverse experiences, low levels of social support and emotional skill deficits. Yet these factors have not been extensively researched with young people who offend. The current study aimed to develop the understanding of emotion recognition ability and perceived social support in young people who offend and to explore the relationship between these variables. A total of 50 young people who offend were recruited through three Youth Offending Teams and 50 age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and academically matched young people without a known offending history were recruited from a college and youth service in the same geographical area. All participants completed a demographic questionnaire, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, a Facial Emotion Recognition Task, a Verbal Emotional Prosody Recognition Task and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Failing to support the hypotheses, statistical analyses failed to show that, relative to the controls, young people who offend had significantly higher levels of alexithymia, lower levels of perceived social support or lower ability to recognise others’ emotions. However, relative to the controls, young people who offend did show significantly lower ability to recognise fear through verbal prosody. Of particular interest, looked after status, which was more commonly reported among young people who offend (38%) than controls (4%), was the predominant factor associated with all outcome variables. Thus looked after status, rather than offending status in isolation, is more associated with difficulties in identifying and describing feelings, ability to recognise others’ emotions and levels of perceived social support. In addition, significant correlations were found between (1) alexithymia and perceived social support, (2) the ability to recognise others’ emotions and perceived social support and (3) the ability to recognise emotions from facial expressions and verbal prosody. Theoretical and clinical implications of the study findings are discussed and areas for future research are suggested.