Moving Beyond Exploratory Deviance: The Influence of Curiosity on Repetitive Deviant/Delinquent Behavior

• In Event: The Role of Psychosocial Factors in the Development of Criminal and Delinquent Behavior

Abstract

Curiosity may be an overlooked concept in criminological theory. We previously found that curiosity predicted involvement in “exploratory” deviant/delinquent behavior, as theoretically expected (Mayone & Arneklev, 2015). These are behaviors that someone might engage in “a few times” (e.g., to satisfy their curiosity). Additional analyses revealed that curiosity also significantly predicted a general crime/deviance index (Arneklev & Dario, 2018A) and specific serious offenses (Arneklev & Dario, 2018B), while controlling for self-control capacity (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). Here, we test curiosity’s ability to predict deviant/delinquent behavior by including “more than a few times” as an attribute in our dependent variable, again controlling for the most powerful and widely used self-control capacity scale, the Grasmick scale (Pratt & Cullen, 2000). Implications of significant results, and future directions, are discussed.

Author

• Bruce J. Arneklev, Florida Atlantic University