Running Head: SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME: TESTING THE LINK 1
Satisfaction with life and crime: Testing the link
Jeremy Olsona*, Randy L. Martinb, and Nadine M. Connellc
aCriminal of Justice, Penn State University Wilkes-Barre, Dallas, PA, USA; bSchool of Graduate
Studies and Research, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, USA; cCriminology and
Criminal Justice, Griffith University Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Correspondence about this article should be addressed to Jeremy Olson, Criminal Justice, Penn
State University Wilkes-Barre, 44 University Drive 108 B Science Dallas PA 18612. Contact:
(570) 675-9255 or [email protected], ORCID 0000-0001-8501-7714
Jeremy Olson, Assistant professor, Criminal Justice, Penn State University Wilkes-Barre. Randy L.
Martin, Dean, Graduate Studies and Research, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Nadine M. Connell,
Associate Professor, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University.
11558 words
SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 2
Satisfaction with life and crime: Testing the link
Abstract
This study tests the hypothesis that higher perceptions of satisfaction with life (SWL) are related to lower engagement in crime and deviance. The results can inform prevention, intervention, and policy efforts based on deterrence, general strain, and restorative justice within the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Using a sample of students at two Pennsylvania universities, data were collected using a paper-based, self-reported survey that included measures for their perceptions of SWL, feelings of strain, and engagement in past acts of deviance and crime. Data analysis included independent samples T-tests and logistic regression estimates. Results of the t-tests supported the hypothesis for nine of 16 acts of deviance/crime. Logistic regression models supported the hypothesis, with SWL having significant associations alone, and with SWL eliminating the relationship to strain alone when SWL covaried with strain. Based on these results, the study offers recommendations to further test the satisfaction with life-crime link, to incorporate SWL interventions into the criminal justice system, and to study SWL interventions for evidence of success.
Keywords: crime, delinquency, happiness, satisfaction with life, subjective well-being
SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 3
Introduction
In their seminal works, upon which much of criminal justice is built, both Bentham
(1781) and Beccaria (1764) clearly note the influence of pain and pleasure as motivators of human behavior. Bentham felt so strongly about the role of these two factors that he wrote ‘(i)t is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do’
(Bentham, 1781, p. 1). Accordingly, the goals of our system of punishments should be to increase pleasure associated with people’s compliance to the laws and to increase pain in response to their violations of the law. Like the goals espoused for criminal justice, psychology also holds that both pleasure and pain are fundamental to human behaviors. Speaking to mental processes, Sigmund Freud wrote that ‘…any given process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with…avoidance of “pain” or with production of pleasure’ (Freud, 1922, p. 1). Thus, pleasure has long been associated with motivation.
Historically, however, these two disciplines have focused primarily on pain’s role in offending. Criminal justice has largely attempted to achieve the goal of reducing crime by increasing pain felt, or anticipated, upon violations of law. Psychology has traditionally focused on deficits within the person, particularly those associated with pain, for example, skills for managing emotions or shifting distorted thinking. Here, we attempt to switch that emphasis to understanding the role of pleasure, or satisfaction with life (SWL).
Recently, the absence of strategies to increase life satisfaction as an intervention strategy has led to calls for focus on SWL’s role in preventing and countering deviance (Nikolic- SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 4
Ristanovic, 2014; Seligman, 1999). Heeding these calls, researchers are now investigating
whether satisfaction with life and crime are linked (Alfaro-Beracoechea, Puente, Costa,
Ruvalcaba, & Paez, 2018; Buunk, Peiro, Rocabert, & Dijkstra, 2016; Dixon, Nastally, &
Waterman, 2010; Eryilmas, 2018; Harris, Pedneault, & Willis, 2019; Maccagnan, Taylor, &
White, 2019; MacDonald, Piquero, Valois, & Zullig, 2005; McCarthy & Casey, 2011; Moore,
Huebner, & Hills, 2012; Suldo & Huebner, 2004; Tang & Chan, 2017; Tweed et al., 2011;
Valois, Paxton, Zullig, & Huebner, 2006; Valois, Zullig, Drane, & Huebner, 2001; Vashisht,
Tanwar, & Tanwar, 2018). Additionally, work has begun to integrate SWL into practice. The
General Strain Theory (Agnew, 1992, 2005; Agnew & White, 1992), the Risk-Needs-
Responsivity Model (Andrews & Bonta, 2010; Andrews & Dowden, 2007), the Good Lives
Model (Ward & Brown, 2004; Whitehead, Ward, & Collie, 2007), and work on resilience
(Griffin, 2005; Johnson et al., 1996; Ortega, Beauchemin, & Kaniskan, 2008; Pierce & Shields,
1998; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004) seek to address SWL or related factors.
As is expected at this point, extant literature supporting an SWL-crime association is sparse. Many of the available studies rely on proxies for both satisfaction with life and deviance,
often they are questions that are “close-enough” and available for secondary analysis of datasets
collected for other purposes (Aishvarya et al., 2014; MacDonald et al., 2005; Valois et al., 2006;
Valois et al., 2001). The present study addresses these concerns by analyzing primary self-report data from a sample of college students using the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener, Emmons,
Larsen, & Griffin, 1985) and an adapted version of the Self-Reported Delinquency, General
Delinquency Scale (Elliott, Ageton, & Huizinga, 1985). We test the hypothesis that higher satisfaction with life is associated with a lower probability of reporting criminal and deviant acts. SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 5
Finding support for this hypothesis will help efforts to further inject SWL into traditional and contemporary offender interventions.
Literature Review
While happiness has been a topic of interest to the human good at least since the time of
Aristotle (cf. Aristotle, 1999), the scientific study of happiness began in the 1970s with a focus on uncovering its demographic correlates (Baumgardner & Crothers, 2009; Diener, 1984; Diener
& Seligman, 2004). That initial round of research led to the general finding that most people were happy regardless of their ages, races, ethnicities, sexes, income levels, educational attainments, and countries of residence (Argyle, 1987; Campbell, Converse, & Rodgers, 1976;
King & Napa, 1998; Myers & Diener, 1995, 1997). These surprisingly universal findings helped lead researchers to begin scientific studies into the origins of happiness within people.
The second wave of happiness research uncovered three components to human happiness.
These are positive affect, negative affect, and satisfaction with life. Positive and negative affect appear to be personality-based, generalized emotional reactions to events in the world. While they experience both positive and negative affect, humans tend to experience one of these emotional reactions more often than the other. People who tend toward positive affect generally experience eustress and people who tend toward negative affect generally experience distress
(Baumgardner & Crothers, 2009). The third component of happiness is satisfaction with life
(SWL). SWL is the conscious awareness one has to the circumstances of his or her life overall
(Baumgardner & Crothers, 2009; Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004).
People who believe their life is going well will report high levels of SWL (Diener, 1984; Diener
& Diener, 1996; Diener et al., 1985). SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 6
These three components of happiness can work together to influence people’s perceptions of life events. People with greater positive affect and higher SWL tend to view the outcomes of events positively while the opposite is more likely to occur in people who have greater negative affect and lower SWL (Argyle, 1987; Baumgardner & Crothers, 2009). These components can also work to influence each other. The Dynamic Model of Affect (Zautra, Affelck, Tennen,
Reich, & Davis, 2005) posits that as people experience multiple negative outcomes and emotions, damage to all three components occurs; not only does negative affect increase, but both positive affect and SWL decrease. But, where people experience more positive emotions from behaviors and situations, they increase two of these components- positive affect and SWL- over time. In turn, happier people can engage in more complex reasoning and are more likely to take risks necessary to improve their lives (Dunning, Fetchenhauer, & Schlosser, 2017). While more complex reasoning and positive risks may not always lead to less offending, one’s efforts to start this positive chain of events could start with SWL.
Satisfaction with Life
Satisfaction with life (SWL) is sometimes interchangeably referred to as ‘subjective well- being’ (SWB), ‘life satisfaction,’ or ‘quality of life’ in the happiness literature. SWL is the extent to which a person feels satisfaction with the conditions of their life. It is determined by reflection on the social, historical, and collective experiences that each person has had in life (Argyle,
1987; Martikainen, 2009; Tang & Chan, 2017). In determining how one perceives the conditions of their life, they make comparisons between fulfilled and desired wants and needs, judge their circumstances against some standard they have developed over the course of life, and often weigh these against a comparable group of similarly situated peers (Baumeister, 1991; Kasser, SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 7
2002; Layard, 2005). Perceptions of SWL rise as one’s needs are met and their desires are
fulfilled, relative to similarly situated peers.
Researchers generally measure SWL in one of two ways. One of these ways is to ask a
single, global, Likert-type item related to one’s perception of SWL such as ‘Overall, I am satisfied with the circumstances of my life.’ Alternately, researchers may utilize a set of inter-
related, Likert-type items querying satisfaction with life and devise a scale of SWL from the
responses. Concerns for over-exaggeration, distortion, or unreliable self-reported responses from
participants have largely been mitigated for both of these measures, but especially so for multi-
item SWL scales (Argyle, 1987; Baumeister, 1991; Baumgardner & Crothers, 2009; Campbell et
al., 1976; Diener, 1984; Schwartz, 1992). Presently both methods appear in the SWL literature.
Using these types of measures, researchers have discovered that higher ratings of SWL
are associated with protective and desistance factors such as resilience, positive expectations for
the future, asset building, problem-solving, and work performance (Baumgardner & Crothers,
2009; Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004; Tugade & Fredrickson,
2004), as well as decreased fear of crime (Alfaro-Beracoechea et al., 2018). Researchers also
report that higher SWL is related to abstinence or recovery from deviance such as lower
substance use (Donohue et al., 2003; Maccagnan et al., 2019), increased remission from
addiction (Laudet, Becker, & White, 2009), lower exhibition of mental health disorder (Donohue
et al., 2003), fewer externalizing (delinquency, aggression) behaviors (Suldo & Huebner, 2004),
and lower engagement in and victimization from bullying (Estevez, Murgui, & Musitu, 2009;
Moore et al., 2012). Notably, most of these studies were single, cross-sectional assessments of
their samples, while two (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Laudet et al., 2009) captured repeated
measures from their samples. Though limited and mostly correlational, the emerging evidence SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 8 indicates that SWL is a valid and measurable concept and that it is related to factors of concern for criminology. The latter should not be surprising, given that criminology and the criminal justice system coincide with concepts of satisfaction with life. The connections between SWL and criminology/criminal justice are especially strong in deterrence, general strain theory, and restorative justice.
Satisfaction with Life in Criminal Justice Theory
Deterrence
America’s criminal justice system was founded on the philosophy of utilitarianism, with the belief that human beings are hedonistic and try to maximize the benefits while minimizing the risks of our behaviors (Bernard, Snipes, & Gerould, 2015; Kubrin, Stucky, & Krohn, 2009).
One way in which the criminal justice system operates to achieve its goal of decreased crime is to increase the perceptions of pains/risks associated with crime while also reducing the satisfactions, both tangible and intangible, that can result from one’s engagement in crime; in a word, deterrence. If the criminal justice system deters antisocial behaviors by increasing pain and reducing pleasure, it can also encourage prosocial behaviors in a myriad of ways, including increasing pleasure and reducing pain.
General Strain Theory
According to Agnew’s General Strain Theory (GST), people experience a state of negative emotionality when they experience one or more of three circumstances: 1) when they believe their desired goals are unfairly blocked; 2) when they cannot reach their goals; or, 3) when something they value is taken away from them (Agnew, 1992, 2005; Agnew & White,
1992). Agnew’s state of negative emotionality, which he calls ‘strain,’ is equivalent to a mixed state of what was described earlier as negative affect and decreased satisfaction with life. The SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 9 theory suggests that when a person encounters a strain producing event their adaptive skills are challenged and they must call on acquired social resources to help overcome the feelings of strain. If those social resources are not sufficient to overcome the feelings of strain, the person is much more likely to engage in deviance and crime (Agnew, 1992, 2005; Agnew & White, 1992;
Bernard et al., 2015; Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2014). Strain, then, is antithetical to satisfaction with life.
Still, as posited for satisfaction with life, Agnew describes that there is a cognitive component of strain (Agnew, 1992, 2006). That is, people are aware of the goals they hope to attain, the perceived importance of those goals to their lives and futures, how those goals situate them with equally positioned peers, and their calls on social resources to help overcome strain.
Understanding how these individualized perceptions work with or counteract each other could improve our ability to help people- including offenders- overcome strain and increase satisfaction with life, thereby reducing crime and deviance.
Restorative Justice
Restorative justice is often described as a philosophy where crime is defined as a harm to people and relationships. The harm is often addressed by employing strategies where the person who harmed (offender) meets with the person they harmed (victim) in order to explore ways of repairing the harm and building or rebuilding the interpersonal relationships damaged by the harm (Bazemore & Schiff, 2001; Latimer, Dowden, & Muise, 2005; Sherman, Strang, Mayo-
Wilson, Woods, & Ariel, 2015; Tweed et al., 2011; Wong, Bouchard, Gravel, Bouchard, &
Morselli, 2016). Exploration of harm occurs as each person discusses their perceptions of the harm that resulted from the incident and, for the person who harmed, the harm that caused the incident (Bazemore & Schiff, 2001; Zehr, 2015). Restoration is achieved through a series of SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 10 individualized processes where those impacted by the harm meet and give attention to the needs of the person harmed, person who harmed, and the community. Once needs are identified, participants develop and enact strategies to hold the person who harmed accountable for repairing harms, to protect the community from further harm, and to allow the person harmed and the person who harmed to build competencies. The goals of these strategies are to help person harmed and the person who harmed return to (or achieve) responsible and productive living, and to strengthen interpersonal relationships among community members (Torbert, 2008;
Torbert & Thomas, 2005; Wachtel, 2013; Zehr, 2002, 2015).
Dr. Howard Zehr is widely credited with bringing the vision of restorative justice to the
American criminal justice system; he is often referred to as the grandfather of Restorative
Justice. When discussing the traditions that helped him form the vision of restorative justice,
Zehr (2015) described shalom. Generally, shalom is a peaceful state of well-being where people live in harmony with each other and have access to the physical and material needs to keep them free from injury, illness, and other maladies. In Zehr’s words, ‘(s)halom refers to a condition of
‘all rightness,’ of things being as they should be, in various dimensions’ (2015, p. 133). As further described by Zehr, these various dimensions of shalom are strikingly similar to the domains writers have ascribed to satisfaction with life such as autonomy, interpersonal relationships, health, material goods, and mental stability (Argyle, 1987; Campbell et al., 1976;
Martikainen, 2009; Ramm & Czetli, 2004; Sears, 1977). Thus, understanding SWL could increase our ability to repair harm and move toward shalom.
SWL – Crime Link in Criminal Justice Research
Researchers recently took notice that satisfaction with life appears in a variety of theoretical understandings of criminal justice and have begun to undertake research to determine SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 11 if there is a satisfaction with life-crime link. Though limited, the efforts of these researchers show some evidence of a connection between SWL and crime. For instance, in a sample of youth
Valois, Zullig, Drane, and Huebner (2001) found that higher perceptions of satisfaction with life were associated with lower self-reports of physical fighting and that SWL, race, and sex had influence on carrying weapons and riding in a car with a driver who had been drinking.
MacDonald, Piquero, Valois, and Zullig (2005) found similar results as related to carrying a weapon and fighting. Valois, Paxton, Zullig, and Huebner (2006) found an inverse relationship between satisfaction with life and carrying a knife, club, or gun, and fighting in a sample of middle school youths. In a study of southeastern students in high school and middle school,
Suldo and Huebner (2004) found that higher SWL was associated with lower aggression and delinquency, even after initial psychopathology was accounted for. Findings like these are encouraging criminologists to call for the criminal justice system to look toward SWL as a potential component of intervention (Nikolic-Ristanovic, 2014; Ronel & Elisha, 2011; Tweed et al., 2011).
Notably, only one of the studies above (Suldo & Huebner, 2004) included a primary sample of high school and middle school students intentionally studied for SWL. The other three studies (MacDonald et al., 2005; Valois et al., 2006; Valois et al., 2001) were secondary analyses of various samples from the CSC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey and Middle School Youth Risk
Behavior Survey. All were administered in the same southeastern U.S. state. These studies also involve limited measures deviance/crime and sampled only middle and high school aged youths.
While these results are encouraging for understanding the SWL-crime link, they cannot be generalized beyond youths in the southeastern U.S. or to other acts of crime or deviance. Other studies exist that examine SWL within offenders and ex-offenders, but these are mostly SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 12
exploratory/qualitative, do not directly test offending itself, and/or are based outside of the U.S.
(Buunk et al., 2016; Eryilmas, 2018; Harris et al., 2019; Vashisht et al., 2018). Thus, the available research on SWL and crime is largely focused on youth and on a limited variety of
deviant behavior. If criminal justice is to consider including SWL as a concern for its
interventions, research should demonstrate a satisfaction with life-crime link among a more
diverse population and across more measures of deviance and crimes similar to those people and
behaviors subject to the entirety of the system. The present study adds to such tests by sampling
Pennsylvania college students in a research project specifically designed to test the SWL-crime
association across a variety of deviant/criminal acts while controlling for strain experiences.
Methods of the Present Study
In order to help determine whether there is a link between satisfaction with life and crime, the current study examined a sample of students from two Pennsylvania universities. The study collected data using paper surveys that included multi-item measures of SWL as well as engagement in 16 types of deviant/criminal acts. We tested the hypothesis that higher levels of satisfaction with life would be associated with lower engagement in crime; or,
H: Satisfaction with life → (-) engagement in crime and deviance.
Participants
The current study examined self-reported, paper-based survey data collected during a multiple hypothesis study by two of the present authors testing a specific theory of happiness, including the hypothesis of the current study. The participants came from two rural Pennsylvania universities. University A was a mid-sized, public university. University B was a small, private, liberal arts university located within 50 miles of University A. The procedures included obtaining informed consent and asking students not to complete the survey more than once. We SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 13 did not offer inducements (e.g., extra credit) for participation. The Institutional Review Boards at both universities reviewed and approved the protocols in the study.
We began data collection by identifying all courses required of incoming freshmen or transfer students being offered during the data collection period (80 such courses/sections at
University A and nine courses/sections at University B). We assigned each course/section an individual number between 1 and 89. We then randomly chose numbers between 1 and 89 and contacted the instructor of record for each randomly selected course, asking permission to administer paper-based surveys during a regularly schedule session. We repeated this process until we reached our targeted number of surveys appropriate for the variables in the larger study.
This process identified 393 possible participants. Of them, three participants chose not to participate while nine submitted incomplete surveys and were removed from the study. The final sample was 381 usable surveys (96.95% completion rate). Consistent with enrollment differences between the two universities, 311 sample members (81.6%) attended University A while 70 members (18.4%) attended University B.
Measures of the Variables
Dependent Variable: Past crime and deviance
Participants completed an adapted version of the Self-Reported Delinquency, General
Delinquency Scale (Elliott et al., 1985). The self-report method is one of the most frequently used methods of assessing engagement in delinquency and crime (Thornberry & Krohn, 2000).
The SRD-GD itself is easily adaptable to study parameters and enjoys well-established reliability and validity (Hindelang, Hirschi, & Weiss, 1981; Huizinga & Elliott, 1986; Piquero, MacIntosh,
& Hickman, 2002; Thornberry & Krohn, 2000). The current study utilized an adaptation of the
SRD-GD asking participants to recall the number of times over the past 12 months that they SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 14
engaged in 12 behaviors considered crimes [e.g. ‘stolen or (tried to steal) anything,’ ‘carried a hidden weapon other than a pocket knife,’ ‘driven a vehicle while intoxicated,’ ‘smoked or used marijuana or hashish (‘pot,’ ‘grass,’ ‘hash’)]. Respondents were also asked about engagement in four behaviors considered deviant for college students (e.g., lying to a parent about a grade, cheating on an exam) over the same time period. While these behaviors are not criminal acts, they do fall outside the socially accepted standards for college students. Students caught committing these acts can suffer consequences such as failing a class for cheating on an exam or expulsion from college for plagiarizing a paper. Such socially unacceptable behaviors have been used in previous studies of adolescents (Basque, Toupin, & Cote, 2012; Buker & Erbay, 2018) and college students (Huck, Spraitz, Bowers, & Morris, 2017). We thought it best to include them in our analyses to be consistent with that prior research.
We first totaled the number of criminal and deviant acts respondents reported engaging n over the last 12 months and found a range (0 – 11,245) too large for analysis or effective removal of outliers. We discuss this in more detail in our analysis plan below. Of the 381 students, 90
(23.6%) reported no engagement in any crime or deviance over the past 12 months while 291
(76.4%) reported having engaged in one or more of the acts. Based on that finding, we created dummy variables of four subgroups from all 16 deviant/criminal acts. We coded these as ‘0’ where participants had not engaged in any of the acts and ‘1’ where participants had reported engaging in one or more the acts. The four groups (and percentage who engaged in them) were
Deviant Acts (53.3%), Property Offenses (26.2%), Violent Offenses (19.7%), and Drug and
Alcohol Offenses (52.0%). The individual behaviors used to make up each of these 4 groups is listed in Table 2. These four groups serve as dependent variables in the multivariate analyses described in the next sections. SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 15
Independent Variables
Satisfaction With Life
Participants completed the Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener et al., 1985), a self-
reported measure of satisfaction with life. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) consists of
five Likert-type questions designed to assess a person’s perceptions of global happiness (e.g., ‘In
most ways, my life is close to my ideal’) on a seven-point scale (1 = ‘strongly disagree,’ 7 =
‘strongly agree’). Reponses to all five items are combined for a total SWLS score between 5 and
35. Higher scores indicate stronger perceptions of SWL. The SWLS is a publicly available and generally accepted instrument used by researchers in multiple countries around the world (Pavot
& Diener, 2008; Zanon, Bardagi, Layous, & Hutz, 2014). When used in samples of college
students, average scores tend to range between 23.0 and 25.2 with standard deviations between
5.8 and 6.4 (Pavot & Diener, 2008). Previous factor analysis studies have found that the five
SWLS items load onto one item with alphas ranging between .588 and .911 (Diener et al., 1985;
Pavot & Diener, 2008; Slocum-Gori, Zumbo, Michalos, & Diener, 2009).
Satisfaction with Life Scale scores for the present sample ranged from 5 (n=1) to 35
(n=3). The average SWLS score was 23.92, with a standard deviation of 5.86. The Crohnbach’s
alpha coefficient in this sample was .816. Principal components factor analysis found all five
SWLS questions loaded onto one factor where coefficients ranged between .583 and .852, and
where only the last question (‘If I could live my life over, I would change nothing’) loaded below
.787. These results indicated that the SWLS scores and reliability in this sample were consistent
with previous findings of SWLS scores in college students (Pavot & Diener, 2008; Slocum-Gori
et al., 2009).
Strain SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 16
We tested strain using Broidy’s (2001) scale that measures emotions felt when goals are
blocked and when bad things happen to people. The instrument measures participants’ subjective
experiences of seven emotions (angry, cranky, depressed, insecure, resentful, stressed, and
worthless) when they encounter blocked goals or stressful events. It uses a four-point Likert-type
scale from 1 (never) to 4 (always). The items have been used in previous research either as combined into one Strain scale (score range from 14 -56), or into two subscales, Block and
Event, each with a range of 7 to 28. Higher scores indicate greater experience of strain.
In our sample, the average score on the Block subscale of strain was 18.80 (s.d. = 4.57, α
= .820) and the average score on the Event subscale was 18.96 (s.d. = 4.87, α = .828). Thus, our
respondents reported experiencing about the same levels of strain when their goals were blocked
as they felt when bad things happened to them. The average score on the overall Strain scale was
37.76 (s.d. = 8.88, α = .897). We utilized the overall strain scale in the final analyses.
Demographics
Participants completed items for age, race/ethnicity, and sex. Age was recorded in years
old. The race/ethnicity item included options for ‘African American/Black,’ ‘Asian,’
‘Caucasian/White,’ and ‘Other.’ The sex item included ‘Female’ and ‘Male.’
The age range of the sample members was 18 to 25 with the average student at 19.12
years old (s.d.= 1.345). Females represented 57.7% of the sample (n=220) and there were 161
males (42.3%). Most respondents were White (87.7%), with African Americans/Blacks representing 6.6% of the sample and ‘Other races’ comprising 5.8% of the sample. Due to the limited number of respondents in non-white categories, we dummy coded a race variable,
‘White,’ for analyses where 87.7% of the cases were white and 12.3% were non-white.
According to enrollment information obtained from CollegeData.com and each university’s SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 17
website, these demographics are consistent with the enrollments at each university. Table 1
contains descriptive statistics for demographics and scaled items. Table 2 contains descriptive
statistics for deviant and criminal acts.
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Table 1 about here
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Table 2 about here
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Analysis Plan
This study tested the hypothesis that higher perceptions of SWL were associated with less engagement in crime and deviance, or
H: Satisfaction with life → (-) crime and deviance.
We conducted two series of hypothesis tests using IBM SPSS version 26. First, we used
Deviance to categorize respondents into two groups, a group who did not engage in crime and
deviance and a group who did engage in crime and deviance. We then conducted 16
Independent Samples T-tests to determine if the means of SWLS differed significantly between
those who did and those who did not commit each of the 16 deviant and criminal acts. If the
groups whose members did not engage in crime and deviance scored significantly higher on the
SWLS than the groups whose members engaged in crime or deviance, our hypothesis would be
supported. SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 18
To determine the association of SWL and strain on engagement in crime and deviance,
we used each of the four subgroups of deviance/crime as the dependent variable in a series of
separate logistic regression models. Logistic regression models are appropriate for dichotomous
dependent variables where linear relationships between independent and dependent variables do
not exist due to the binary nature of the outcome variable. By performing a natural logarithmic
transformation on the dependent variable, nonlinear relationships can be understood in linear
terms (Menard, 2002; Pampel, 2000). To help determine the fixed effects of SWL and strain on
engagement in crime and deviance, we included Strain in the first model, SWLS in the second
model, and both Strain and SWLS in the third model. Each model also included the demographic
variables sex (with male as the reference category), white (with white as the reference category), and age as controls. After completing fixed effects analyses, we tested models including interactions of strain and SWLS (Strain x SWLS). The logistic equation for the last and full
models was:
EQ: logit(Dev/crime subtype) = α + B(Sex) + B(White) + B(Age) + B(Strain) + B(SWLS) + ß(StrainxSWLS) where logit(Dev/crime subtype) is the natural logarithm of the odds of engagement in the subgroup of crime and deviance (Deviant, Property, Violent, Drug and Alcohol), α is the constant, and B is
the coefficient for each variable in the equation.
Results
T-tests for SWLS and Crime and Deviance
We ran a series of 16 independent samples t-tests comparing the SWLS scores of sample members who reported engaging in deviance/crime against SWLS scores of members who did not engage in deviance/crime for each of the deviant/criminal acts. Those t-tests revealed
significantly higher SWLS scores for respondents who did not engage in nine of the criminal and SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 19 deviant acts. There were no significant differences in SWLS scores for seven of the criminal and deviant acts; however, there were fewer than ten respondents who reported engaging in three of the non-significant acts (intentionally bouncing a check, forcing or trying to force sex, and selling hard drugs). Overall, t-tests supported the hypothesis that people with higher perceptions of satisfaction with life reported lower plagiarizing (t=3.166, p=.002), stealing (t=3.913, p=.000), receiving stolen property (t=2.508, p=.013), carrying a weapon (t=2.808, p=.005), fighting
(t=2.386, p=.018), using all three types of drugs [marijuana (t=2.880, p=.004), prescription drugs
(t=2.757, p=.008), and hard drugs (t=3.757, p=.000)], and selling prescription drugs (t=2.673, p=.008). Mean differences in SWLS scores between the groups who did not engage in deviance and those who did ranged between 1.735 points (use of marijuana) and 5.226 points (using hard drugs). Table 3 shows t-test results for all crimes/deviant acts.
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Table 3 about here
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Regression Models
To assess associations between SWL and the subtypes of deviance and crime, we estimated four logistic regression models for each of the four subtypes of crime (Deviant Acts,
Property Offenses, Violent Offenses, and Drug and Alcohol Offenses). Within each subtype,
Model 1 estimated the fixed effects of Strain, Model 2 estimated the fixed effects of SWLS,
Model 3 estimated the fixed effects when Strain and SWLS were allowed to covary, and Model 4 tested interaction effects of Strain and SWLS when fixed effects of Strain and SWLS were allowed to covary. For all models, sex (male as reference), race (white as reference), and age acted as controls. SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 20
For Deviant Acts, Strain had statistically significant relationship with the likelihood of committing a deviant act such that higher strain was associated with a greater likelihood of engaging in a deviant act (OR = 1.032, p = .013). Meanwhile, SWLS had a significant inverse relationship on the likelihood of engaging in a deviant act such that higher perceived SWL was associated with a lower likelihood of engaging in deviant acts (OR = .946, p = .003). When they covaried, the protective relationship with SWLS remained (OR = .956, p = .028) but Strain was no longer statistically associated with engaging in a deviant act. The same outcome occurred when we included interactions in the model; Strain was not significant while higher SWLS was associated with a lower likelihood of engaging in deviant acts (OR = .843, p = .048). Interaction effects for Strain x SWLS were not significant. Sex and age were consistently statistically significant across all models such that females and older sample members were less likely to report engaging in deviant acts.
For Property Offenses, higher levels of Strain were associated with a higher probability of reporting engaging in property offenses (OR = 1.030, p = .032). SWLS was indirectly related to property offending, again demonstrating a protective factor (OR = .929, p = .000). When they covaried, Strain was no longer associated with reporting engaging in property offenses, while higher perceived SWLS was associated with a lower likelihood of engaging in property offenses
(OR = .936, p = .003). Interestingly, when Strain and SWLS interacted, there were no significant fixed or interaction effects of strain or SWLS on property offenses. Across all models, race/ethnicity demonstrated a significant relationship with property crime such that non-white students were approximately two times more likely to report having engaged in property offenses than were white students across all models. Table 4 contains fixed effect logistic regression SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 21
models for Deviant Acts and Property Offenses. Table 5 contains interaction effect logistic
regression models for the same dependent variables.
------
Table 4 about here
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Table 5 about here
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Strain was not significantly associated with effects on engaging in Violent Offenses in
any of the models. In the model that only included SWLS, higher SWLS was related to a lower
likelihood of engaging in violence (OR = .947, p = .014), similar to the findings in the model
where Strain and SWLS covaried (OR = .944, p = .019). When Strain and SWLS interacted,
neither of these variables demonstrated significant fixed or interactive associations on the
likelihood of engaging in Violent Offenses. Sex was significantly associated with outcomes
across all models, with females approximately 60% less likely than males to report having engaged in a violent offense.
For Drug and Alcohol Offenses, higher Strain (OR = 1.029, p = .023) was associated with significantly higher likelihood of reported engagement. Meanwhile, SWLS (OR = .963, p = .040) was significantly associated with a lower likelihood of engaging in drug and alcohol offenses.
However, Strain and SWLS were no longer significant when they covaried nor in the interaction models. No control variables were significant across all models of Drug and Alcohol Offenses.
Table 6 contains fixed effect logistic regression models for Violent and Drug and Alcohol SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 22
Offenses. Table 7 contains interaction effect logistic regression models for the same dependent
variables.
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Table 6 about here
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Table 7 about here
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Overall, these results indicated support for the hypothesis that individuals with higher perceptions of satisfaction with life are less likely to report having engaged in recent crime
and/or deviance. Within this sample, the association of SWL with crime and deviance held in the
majority of t-test models and in all fixed effects regression models. Further, the presence of SWL
eliminated the statistically significant association of Strain for offenses where Strain had been a
significant predictor of deviance/crime (Deviant Acts, Property Offenses, and Drug and Alcohol
Offenses). This suggests that at least for this sample, SWL is driving associations with behavior
above and beyond the effects of Strain. These effects are not equal across all behaviors, however,
with our results suggestive of differences in Violent Acts compared to other types of behaviors.
Such findings are especially interesting in light of criminological questions related to
specialization versus generalization of crime and deviance. We do urge caution, however, due to
the extremely low levels of self-reported violence offenses in this sample.
Significant effects of SWLS remain only for the Deviant Acts model once Strain and
SWLS interact. Contrary to expectations, in no model are the interactive effects of Strain and SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 23
SWLS significant. This points to the need for future research to continue to untangle the
relationship between Strain and SWL.
Discussion
This study adds to a growing literature establishing an inverse link between satisfaction
with life and crime and deviance. After analyzing self-reports from students in randomly
sampled classes at two Pennsylvania universities, we found evidence that higher satisfaction with
life (SWL) was significantly associated with less involvement in acts of crimes and deviance, at
least until measures of strain interacted with measures of SWL. This finding may not be surprising, given the theoretical relationships between strain and SWL through resilience.
When discussing his theory of General Strain (GST), Agnew (Agnew, 1992, 2005;
Agnew & White, 1992) noted that access to social resources (e.g. problem-solving skills, personal assets, relationships with others) would insulate people from deviance when they incurred one or more of the three strains. These same factors arise in the happiness literature as both primary goods leading to happiness (Campbell et al., 1976; Ramm, Driscoll, Beighley, &
Ramm, 2009; Sears, 1977) and as resilience factors associated with or resulting from attainment of satisfaction with life (Fredrickson, 2001; Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002; Park et al., 2004;
Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). Given the posited interplay between strain, resilience, and satisfaction with life across various literatures and since the significant effects of both Strain and
SWL disappeared when Strain and SWL interacted in our tests, it is possible that some unmeasured indicator of resilience impacts crime and deviance. Further, noting that the fixed effects of Strain disappeared from our models when it covaried with SWL, we believe this possible impact of resilience could have greater association with SWL. Thus, working to increase the perceptions of SWL in people who harm may bring some form of insulation against SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 24
offending to offenders generally, as well as having additive benefit to those who receive
resilience interventions specifically.
Limitations
Before further discussion of the implications of this study, we must consider some limitations. Chief among these are the limited control variables and a concern for the temporal sequencing of the independent and dependent variables. We discuss each of these in turn.
Controls
Previous studies of SWL and crime have focused on middle and high school youth and we add to the happiness population by sampling college students. Still, college students represent
an incomplete picture of American society. For instance, both age and race were restricted in our
sample; our respondents’ ages ranged between 18 and 25, and 87.7% were white. This is not
consistent with the general population or with population of people who harm (cf. Gabbidon &
Greene, 2019). Additionally, we did not include measures of other demographic factors associated with crime such as employment, socio-economic status, marital status, and neighborhood contexts (Chung & Steinberg, 2006; Piquero, Farrington, Nagin, & Moffit, 2010;
Simons, Wu, Conger, & Lorenz, 1994). Poverty, for instance, has been found to be related to lower life satisfaction in several countries, including in Turkey (Bayram, Aytac, Aytac, Sam, &
Bilgel, 2012) and Chile (Samman & Santos, 2013). The relationship between poverty and crime,
especially property crime, in the United States, while not causal, remains strong but with many
questions about the mechanisms by which this occurs (Imran, Hosen, & Chowdhury, 2018). It is
possible that SWL may help moderate this relationship or otherwise explain the relationship
between poverty and criminal behavior in more nuanced ways. It is also possible that these types
of relationships are culturally distinct, calling for more comparative and cross-cultural SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 25 examinations of the role of SWL on life outcomes. Moving forward, studies should be conscious of the importance of other types of control variables to help address these questions.
Temporal Sequencing and Causal Order
Our measures of crime and deviance asked respondents to report the number of times they engaged in each act over the past 12 months. SWL is considered much more stable than day-to-day moods, and the latter are believed to be impacted more by positive and negative affect (Argyle, 1987; Baumgardner & Crothers, 2009). Nonetheless, we do not have measures of respondents affect before they committed any of these acts. It is possible that respondents’ perceptions of their SWL changed over the course of the 12 months prior to survey completion, after they engaged in some of the acts captured in our data, and/or as they entered/returned to college. As such, we can only discuss associations between reported SWL and self-reported actions at this time and cannot answer the causal order question of whether low SWL came before deviance. During data collection, we made an attempt address this concern by asking participants to predict whether they would engage in four types of deviance or crime sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, their responses were restricted in range and did not permit analysis through sound statistical methods and cannot be reported here. While knowing causal order would strengthen the happiness-crime argument, we still would not know with certainty that lower SWL is why someone commits a deviant or criminal act. We also believe a shorter time frame for reporting previous crime/deviance will increase the validity of responses. In future research, we suggest asking respondents to report the number of actions within the past 30 days. We also believe it is worthwhile to continue asking participants to predict future engagement, particularly where longitudinal research tracks actual behavior of a cohort and such predictions can be validated against future official records. In general, research on satisfaction SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 26
with life will benefit from future studies that engage a longitudinal data design, which will help
parse out many of these concerns.
We also recognize the traditional limitations inherent with self-reported data collection
apply here. Due to issues with social desirability, respondents may be less likely to report deviant
behavior. In addition, the anonymity afforded to them increases the probability that they will
mis-report behavior in either direction. These same concerns about reported behavior exist for
measures of SWL. Students may want to impress researchers and therefore inflate responses.
Additionally, those that were untruthful on behavior questions may be more likely to be
untruthful about SWL. Unfortunately, we cannot test for these effects but do want to acknowledge the potential for their existence.
Present implications
Though these limitations exist, the present study lends credence to the existence of a satisfaction with life-crime link. Given that several of the criminological theories explicitly include conceptualizations relevant to happiness or satisfaction with life, we believe further exploration of the link is warranted. Increasing our understanding of the interplay between happiness, satisfaction with life, and crime could increase our ability to create and enhance interventions that better address the propositions of criminological theories, thereby reducing crimes.
For instance, happiness is explicit in Utilitarianism, one of the primary philosophies upon which the American criminal justice system is built (Beccaria, 1764; Bentham, 1781). According to this philosophy, people consider their behavioral choices and make decisions based on what they believe will bring them more pleasure and/or less pain. The criminal justice system largely
applies this philosophy by seeking to increase the pain of offenders’ antisocial choices so that SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 27
they will not commit crimes. These efforts have resulted in active disregard for increasing the
pleasure/happiness offenders (and victims) perceive. Not only that, but evidence for the success
of deterrence approaches is limited, especially when it comes to reducing recidivism and future offending (Abrams, Shannon, & Sangalang, 2008; Alper & Durose, 2018; Unruh, Gau, &
Waintrup, 2009). Establishing a happiness-crime link and implementing interventions that seek to increase the happiness of offenders could help increase the success rate of Utilitarian efforts.
Happier people will have more to lose by engaging in crime. Because they will have more to lose, they will avoid crime. As an intervention, utilitarian practitioners could teach offenders one of the SWL/happiness models and build awareness of the calculus between committing crimes and direct reductions in SWL (e.g., how drug use can reduce autonomy/freedom, which then reduces relatedness/intimacy, which then reduces inner peace/health). Offenders can then build
goals, with the help of practitioners or alone, that seek to increase SWL. Offenders who realize
the logic and build goals are then less likely to engage in future crimes.
The Good Lives Model of Offender Rehabilitation (GLM) is an example of a current
intervention that works with people who harm in this way. The GLM posits that there are 11
primary human goods, or life domains, essential to achieving SWL. While the importance of any number of these domains can vary throughout the stages of an individual’s life, the GLM proposes that the domains are universal across time, culture, and people. Practitioners who use the GLM work with clients to assess the importance of the domains in both the near and longer terms, to develop goals specific to attainment of those important domains, to identify obstacles which may hinder goal attainment, and to strategize ways to overcome those obstacles (Purvis,
Ward, & Willis, 2011; Siegert, Ward, Levack, & McPherson, 2007; Ward & Brown, 2004;
Whitehead et al., 2007; Yates, Prescott, & Ward, 2010). Inherent in this process is the idea that SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 28 people who harm are less likely to cause further harm when they actively engage in strengths- based interventions leading to planned and desired changes in their lives.
Happiness is not limited to Utilitarians. In the case of General Strain Theory, further exploration of the interactions between the components of happiness- positive and negative affect and satisfaction with life- could also lead to a greater understanding of how strain and resilience work to impact choices of people who might harm when they incur one or more of the sources of strain. The knowledge could then guide interventions with individual offenders. For instance, if research determines that positive affect combined with high satisfaction with life increases a person’s ability to acquire and maintain resilience assets, clinicians and practitioners can immediately work on strengthening resilience assets already in place. However, where satisfaction with life is lower or negative affect is overwhelming, the clinician or practitioner could first design work to increase SWL or block the effects of negative affect before working with people to build resilience assets.
Adding a focus on SWL within any of the approaches in the criminal justice system requires that, while making sure the community is safe, the system also works to understand what drives SWL in individual persons who harm and then, in part, works to increase the perceptions of SWL they achieve by making prosocial choices. This work is already underway.
Multiple models of happiness have been developed and scientifically studied. These models generally include about ten primary needs, or domains, humans seek in achieving SWL
(Campbell et al., 1976; Martikainen, 2009; Ramm & Czetli, 2004; Research, 2016; Sears, 1977;
Sheldon, Elliot, Kim, & Kasser, 2001; Siegert et al., 2007). Interestingly, the domains emerging in these models tend to be strikingly similar, indicating a universal quality of SWL among people SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 29
that is also supported in demographic research on SWL (Argyle, 1987; King & Napa, 1998;
Myers & Diener, 1995, 1997).
If the domains leading to SWL are common among people, the language of SWL could
also be included in restorative justice efforts looking to build a state of shalom between communities, victims, and (potential) offenders. It seems intuitive that if people live within
communities and systems that seek to build their SWL, those people would more willing to live
peaceful, moral, and just lives. Community members, including those harmed and those who
harm within them, can learn the language of one of the SWL models and that language can
become part of restorative efforts. For instance, community-building circles in schools can focus
a circle on how classmates can build the sense of a single domain (e.g., creativity) within each
other, or a circle could focus on what domains classmates feel are harmed by bullying. Likewise,
restorative conferences for specific harms could work to identify the SWL domains harmed in
the offense for both the person harmed (victim) and the person who harmed (offender).
Agreements can then work toward restoring those domains, as well as how to build new
competencies in domains where inadequacies helped lead to the harm. If the greater community
is using the same SWL language, those agreements would be readily understood by probation
officers, school officials, counselors, parents, and others involved in the lives of both the person
harmed and the person who harmed.
At least two of the SWL models have already been translated into interventions employed
within the criminal justice system (Ramm, 2003; Yates et al., 2010; Yates & Prescott, 2011).
While there is some quantitative evidence that such SWL interventions can impact harm
(Damme, Hoeve, Vermeiren, Vanderplasschen, & Colins, 2016), much work remains here, too. SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 30
Based on the foregoing, we offer the following recommendations to those interested in pursuing
the happiness-crime link.
Moving forward
If the field is to heed the calls for a positive criminology (Nikolic-Ristanovic, 2014;
Ronel & Elisha, 2011), research must strengthen knowledge on the link between SWL and
crime, both in the general and offending populations. Qualitative methodologies such as focus
groups and semi-structured interviews with both offenders and non-offenders can help in
understanding how broad groups of people view the relationship between their own satisfaction
with life and their choices to engage crime. Quantitative strategies can help in determining if
those views translate into actual engagement in or aversion/desistance from crimes and, if so,
how SWL influences those crime or no crime decisions.
We proceeded under the belief that satisfaction with life was the stable but more readily
changeable component of happiness and therefore measured only SWL. It is conceivable that the
other two components- positive and negative affect- could influence people’s engagement in
crime and deviance more so than SWL, and they may have additional effects when working in combination with strain and resilience. For instance, negative affect may well have a multiplicative impact on strain, or even an overwhelming effect on levels of resilience when strain is incurred. To better test for this, more detailed information about individuals’ strain experiences, including frequency of exposure, must be collected. Likewise, it is possible that
resilience, SWL, and positive affect have additive insulating effects against strain when all three
are present. Our analyses would not capture these impacts. Future research should include direct,
reliable, and valid measures of positive affect, negative affect, and resilience so that their effects
can be tested within models that include Strain and SWL SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 31
In theoretical terms, SWL has always been a part of the criminal justice system
philosophy. As the field works to develop, validate, and integrate models of SWL into practical
interventions, efforts should be made to incorporate SWL into already successful strategies. For
instance, writers have debated whether models of SWL are aligned with the Risk-Needs-
Responsivity Model (Andrews, Bonta, & Wormith, 2011; Birgden, 2009; Ward, Yates, & Willis,
2012; Whitehead et al., 2007) and with Restorative Justice (Walgrave, Ward, & Zinsstag, 2019).
So long as we are cautious not to degrade the original positive outcomes, intertwining already
successful strategies with potentially universal approaches can work to reduce discontinuities
and conflicts between the multiple social service agencies that people who harm are often involved with, and better align among each other the expectations they place on their shared clients. The results of these integrations should be greater completion rates for interventions and decreased recidivism. In additional to the stand alone SWL models discussed above, efforts to integrate SWL into other already successful programs and policies should commence.
So that it can believe in the efficacy of SWL’s influence on crime reduction, research will need to show the system that the results of SWL interventions are empirically sound.
Randomized control trials of SWL interventions should occur at all three levels of prevention-
universal, targeted, and aftercare. To this end, well-planned longitudinal studies where members of the general population, the at-risk population, and the harming population are randomly assigned into theoretically developed SWL programs would be ideal. If such studies are undertaken and find that SWL programs reduce criminal engagement more than non-SWL programs, SWL can move into the evidence base. And should this happen, SWL research opens up doors to other potentially important programs and policy applications, including the realm of early prevention and intervention opportunities. SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 32
Conclusion
This was a study of the satisfaction with life-crime link. We tested the hypothesis that higher satisfaction with life would be associated with lower engagement in crime and deviance.
The results offered support for our hypothesis; people who perceived higher SWL were less likely to report having engaged in crime and deviance in the 12 months prior to the study, and the presence of SWL in the models eliminated the effects of strain. We add these findings to a nascent, but growing, literature base on the satisfaction with life-crime link and offer our recommendations for moving ahead with practical and research efforts that can help solidify the link. Rather than detracting from criminal justice, we join past and present voices who believe that (finally) adding happiness into the mix will improve the system’s ability to achieve its goal crime reduction.
SATISFACTION WITH LIFE AND CRIME 33
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Data availability statement The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [author initials], upon reasonable request.