Adolescence, Empathy, and the Gender Gap in Delinquency

• Author: Kate K. O’Neill
• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1557085120908332
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085120908332

Feminist Criminology

2020, Vol. 15(4) 410 –437

© The Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1557085120908332

journals.sagepub.com/home/fcx

Article

Adolescence, Empathy,

and the Gender Gap in

Delinquency

Kate K. O’Neill1

Abstract

I propose the gender gap in delinquency is linked to adolescents’ orientation to gender-

normative behavior and empathic development. I use longitudinal data on 1,525 youth

from the Denver Youth Survey to analyze relationships among gender, empathy, and

delinquency. I find girls exhibit higher levels of empathy across adolescence than do

boys, and these differences emerge in preadolescence. Empathy is inversely related to

delinquency, and is predictive of fraud and theft, but not violent delinquency. Finally,

empathy partially mediates the effect of being male on delinquency. I therefore argue

the gender gap in delinquency can be explained—in part—by adherence to gender

norms governing empathetic expression.

Keywords

empathy, delinquency, offending, gender, adolescence, gender gap

Introduction

The gender gap in offending, in which males commit more offenses than do females,

is one of the most enduring findings in criminology. Consequently, criminologists

have examined how and why being male accounts for the gender gap in offending

(Broidy & Agnew, 1997; Daly & Chesney-Lind, 1988; Lauritsen et al., 2009). A pro-

nounced focus on the negative components of masculinity, however, has resulted in

conspicuous inattention to prosocial emotional states, traits, and abilities (Kruttschnitt,

2013). In particular, female-coded prosocial traits, such as empathy, have received

little attention overall as they relate to offending, and although male-coded predictors

of offending such as aggression and impulsivity are regularly tested for “gender

1University of Washington, Seattle, USA

Corresponding Author:

Kate K. O’Neill, Department of Sociology, University of Washington, 211 Savery Hall, Box 353340,

Seattle, WA 98195-3340, USA.

Email: oneillkk@uw.edu

908332FCXXXX10.1177/1557085120908332Feminist CriminologyO’Neill

research-article2020

O’Neill 411

neutrality” (see Hagan et al., 1985; Ishoy & Blackwell, 2019; Steffensmeier & Allan,

1996), predictors of female (non)offending are rarely tested on boys and men.

Therefore, our collective understanding of how and why male-coded behaviors are

associated with offending in general, and the gender gap in particular, far outpaces our

knowledge regarding the deterrent effects of female-coded behaviors. As a result, the

implications of gendering prosocial behaviors and the role of this process in the per-

sistence of the gender gap in offending remain under-theorized.

This article addresses these limitations by focusing on empathic ability—that is, the

ability to transport oneself into the thinking, feeling, and acting of another person

(Dymond, 1950; Ellis, 1982; Eysenck et al., 1985). Empathy requires both emotional

intelligence and future-orientation, in that individuals must recognize the emotional

states of others and predict how and why behaviors affect others’ emotional states. As

with offending, there are age and gender differences in empathic ability. Children gen-

erally possess less empathy than adolescents and adolescents less than adults (Ellis,

1982; Lennon & Eisenberg, 1987; Van Vugt et al., 2011). Empathic ability increases

from childhood through adolescence and is stable throughout most of adulthood

(Eysenck et al., 1985; Grühn et al., 2008). Furthermore, males generally receive lower

empathy scores on indices and tests than do females (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright,

2004; Davis, 1983). Empathy has been argued to inhibit offending in that an individu-

al’s ability to predict the negative emotional reactions of others resulting from their own

antisocial behaviors disinclines the individual toward offending (Feshbach, 1975).

Furthermore, there is evidence that gender differences in empathy are associated with

gender differences in offending and may explain gender gaps in offending (Broidy

et al., 2003). Numerous studies have found evidence of both empathy/offending and

gender/empathy links (Davis, 1983; Jolliffe & Farrington, 2004, 2007; Van Langen

et al., 2014), but few have centered the role of gender socialization and development in

their explanations, and none have directly tested whether empathic ability mediates the

effect of gender on offending. Therefore, empathy’s role in the perpetuation of gender

gaps in offending is not wholly understood and may be underestimated.

I apply an interactionist framework of gender-differentiated development across

childhood and adolescence to address previous findings of girls’ higher levels of

empathic ability and boys’ higher involvement in delinquency. I theorize the gender

gap in delinquency is partly a consequence of empathy’s strong positive association

with femininity and, therefore, empathy’s negative association with masculinity

(Goffman, 1977; West & Fenstermaker, 1995; West & Zimmerman, 1987). This, in

conjunction with increased pressure to conform to these gender norms in adolescence,

results in pronounced gender gaps in both empathic ability and delinquency. In sum,

more empathy means less delinquency, and girls’ socialization into empathic roles

means that—on average—their empathic ability is greater than that of boys. Therefore,

girls engage in less delinquency than boys.

The Denver Youth Survey (DYS) provides an opportunity to trace empathy and

delinquency over time and to specify their temporal relationship in statistical models.

Analyses support previous findings that empathic ability varies within individuals

across the life course (Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004; Davis, 1983; Kohlberg &