Dysfunctional Emotional Family Communications as Predictors of Antisocial Behavior of Adolescents Receiving Social Support

Aim. To study dysfunctional family emotional communications of adolescents who are socially accompanied and registered in juvenile affairs units as predictors of their antisocial behavior.
Methodology. The psychological diagnostic procedure was performed using the questionnaire “Family Emotional Communications” by A. B. Kholmogorova, S. V. Volikova, M. G. Sorokova and the methodology for studying family adaptation and cohesion (FACES-3). The normality of the distribution was verified by a set of computational methods (Shapiro-Wilk and Kolmogorov-Smirnov criteria with Lillyfors’s correction) and graphical (Q-Q and box graphs); the m-group differences were determined using the Mann-Whitney U-test; correlation analysis was performed using the Spearman criterion; factor analysis of data was applied.
Results. It has been established that the emotional predictors of antisocial behavior (committing offenses, using psychoactive substances, vagrancy, and other antisocial actions) in adolescents are dysfunctional emotional communications in their families (criticism, family perfectionism, fixation on negativity, elimination of emotions, over-involvement, inducing anxiety, orientation to external well-being; family cohesion, family emotional connection) which form the two-factor structure – “emotional dysfunctionality of the family” and “emotional family violence.” For male adolescents, the most significant emotional predictor of antisocial behavior is family perfectionism, and for female adolescents, it is a lack of emotional connection in the family with an excess of criticism and elimination of emotions.
Research implications. The results obtained enrich applied practical social and penitentiary psychology. They can be used by psychologists of the social protection system who help dysfunctional families and children raised in them, as well as juvenile affairs units, by parents interested in the emotional and psychological well-being of their adolescent children, and by students of psychology faculties, cadets of departmental universities of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and their teachers.

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