Abstract

Studies increasingly highlight that poor sleep is associated with harmful health and behavioral outcomes, including delinquency. Theory and research suggest that sleep effects may be curvilinear and greater for some groups, but this idea remains largely unexamined in studies of adolescent offending. Drawing on prior scholarship and regression analyses of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health data, we test the “Goldilocks hypothesis” that too little sleep or too much sleep will be positively associated with delinquency. We also test the argument that the effect will be amplified among groups for whom optimal sleep may be especially important. Results suggest support for the main hypothesis, but indicate that sleep duration appears to exert a similar effect on females and males, while, unexpectedly, it appears to exert a stronger rather than smaller effect for whites and high socioeconomic status youth. Implications for theory and research on delinquency are discussed.

摘要

研究越来越多地强调，睡眠不足与有害的健康和行为结果有关，包括犯罪。理论和研究表明，对于某些群体来说，睡眠影响可能是曲线的并且更大，但这一想法在青少年犯罪研究中很大程度上仍未得到检验。借鉴先前对全国青少年到成人健康纵向研究数据的学术研究和回归分析，我们检验了睡眠过少或睡眠过多与犯罪呈正相关的“金发姑娘假说”。我们还测试了这样的论点，即在最佳睡眠可能特别重要的群体中，这种影响会被放大。结果表明支持主要假设，但表明睡眠持续时间似乎对女性和男性产生类似的影响，而出乎意料的是，它似乎对白人和社会经济地位高的青年产生了更大的影响，而不是更小的影响。讨论了对犯罪的理论和研究的意义。