Emotion Recognition and Perceived Social Support in Young People Who Offend
| Author | Maria Wilcox,Neil Frude,Liz Andrew |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420931189 |
| Published date | 01 August 2022 |
| Date | 01 August 2022 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225420931189
Youth Justice
2022, Vol. 22(2) 125 –144
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225420931189
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Emotion Recognition and
Perceived Social Support in
Young People Who Offend
Maria Wilcox , Neil Frude
and Liz Andrew
Abstract
Young people who offend appear stuck in a cycle of adverse experiences, low levels of social support and
emotional skill deficits. Yet these factors have not been extensively researched with young people who
offend. The current study aimed to develop the understanding of emotion recognition ability and perceived
social support in young people who offend and to explore the relationship between these variables. A total
of 50 young people who offend were recruited through three Youth Offending Teams and 50 age, gender,
ethnicity, socio-economic status and academically matched young people without a known offending history
were recruited from a college and youth service in the same geographical area. All participants completed
a demographic questionnaire, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, a Facial Emotion Recognition Task, a Verbal
Emotional Prosody Recognition Task and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Failing to
support the hypotheses, statistical analyses failed to show that, relative to the controls, young people who
offend had significantly higher levels of alexithymia, lower levels of perceived social support or lower ability
to recognise others’ emotions. However, relative to the controls, young people who offend did show
significantly lower ability to recognise fear through verbal prosody. Of particular interest, looked after
status, which was more commonly reported among young people who offend (38%) than controls (4%),
was the predominant factor associated with all outcome variables. Thus looked after status, rather than
offending status in isolation, is more associated with difficulties in identifying and describing feelings, ability
to recognise others’ emotions and levels of perceived social support. In addition, significant correlations
were found between (1) alexithymia and perceived social support, (2) the ability to recognise others’
emotions and perceived social support and (3) the ability to recognise emotions from facial expressions
and verbal prosody. Theoretical and clinical implications of the study findings are discussed and areas for
future research are suggested.
Keywords
alexithymia, emotion recognition, facial emotion recognition, looked after children, perceived social
support, verbal emotional prosody recognition, young people who offend
Corresponding author:
Maria Wilcox, Child & Family Psychology and Therapies Service, St Cadocs, Lodge Road, Caerleon NP18 3XE, UK.
Email: marielle.wilcox2@wales.nhs.uk
931189YJJ0010.1177/1473225420931189Youth JusticeWilcox et al.
research-article2020
Original Article
126 Youth Justice 22(2)
Introduction
Background
Criminal justice systems around the world are based heavily on the use of deterrence,
restorative justice and rehabilitation (Andrews and James, 2010; Bergseth and Bouffard,
2013). However, young people who offend indicate that their needs are being ignored and
poorly met by professionals (Chitsabesan et al., 2006; UserVoice, 2011) and many inter-
ventions for young people who offend are focused on anger management and victim
empathy, which assume that young people who offend are able to draw on socially sup-
portive relationship skills and recognise and express emotions. However, a review of the
literature suggested that young people who offend are stuck in a cycle of adverse experi-
ences and deficits in emotional skills and socially supportive relationships.
Emotional skills and social support
Emotional skills are described as ‘the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions,
to discriminate among them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions’
(Salovey and Mayer, 1990: 198). Research consistently reports a relationship between
emotion recognition from faces and emotion recognition through tone and intonation
(also known as prosody) verbal prosody (Mill et al., 2009; Rigoulot and Pell, 2014).
Studies also report a relationship between recognising one’s own emotions and recognis-
ing others’ emotions (Israelashvili et al., 2019), with deficits in recognising and labelling
one’s own emotions (alexithymia), related to difficulty in associating emotional cues from
facial expressions or verbal emotional prosody to others’ emotional states (Grynberg
et al., 2012). Emotional skills are also thought to be essential to the development of friend-
ships and social support (Fitness, 2006).
The majority of social support tends to be informal, arising through friends and family
(Leach, 2015). Social support can provide varied types of resources (emotional, practical
or informational), aiding the recipient’s health and well-being and their ability to cope
with stressful life events (Lakey and Cohen, 2000), although emotional skills are thought
to mediate the impact of social support on well-being (Chen and Feeley, 2012). Social
support can be divided into three elements: (1) social connectedness/embeddedness; (2)
perceived social support and (3) actual or enacted social support (Barrera, 1986; Burleson
and MacGeorge, 2002; López and Cooper, 2011; Sarason et al., 1990). Studies report a
significant relationship between alexithymia and perceived social support (Karukivi et al.,
2014) and facial emotion recognition (FER) and perceived social support (Collin et al.,
2013). And, difficulty in relationships can result in problems in reliably expressing and
labelling emotions (Spitzer et al., 2005).
It is thought that cognitive processes involved in emotional skills, social behaviour and
the effective management of situations and relationships are related to early attachment
relationships and experiences (Fox et al., 2010). Impaired or underdeveloped emotion
recognition skills are associated with early attachment difficulties when children’s inter-
nal experiences are not understood and labelled by others (Meins et al., 2002; Murray and
Andrews, 2005). Early (attachment) experiences have also been thought to affect
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