I am thrilled and grateful to have been selected to receive a Div. 7 Early Career Outstanding Paper Award for my recent work examining the links between community violence exposure and youths’ well-being. My paper, “Emotionally Numb: Desensitization to Community Violence Exposure Among Urban Youth,” was published in Developmental Psychology. This study was part of my dissertation at the University of Michigan, where I completed my PhD under the mentorship of Rosario Ceballo, PhD, co-author of the paper.
This paper describes the nuanced links between community violence exposure (CVE) among youth and both internalizing and externalizing symptoms over time. Violence exposure is a pervasive and frequent part of daily life for many children and adolescents, particularly those living in low-income, urban neighborhoods.
A fairly new theory in the subfield of CVE, the “desensitization” model, posits that youth who are exposed to inordinate levels of violence in their communities may become emotionally desensitized to its effects over time (Gaylord-Harden et al., 2011; Mrug et al., 2016, 2008; Ng-Mak et al., 2004). The cumulative effects model typically tested in studies of CVE and youth well-being assumes that both internalizing and externalizing symptoms worsen as a constant, linear function of exposure.
That is, every instance of violence exposure over time should predict a commensurate increase in symptoms, regardless of the symptom domain.
In contrast, the desensitization model predicts that internalizing, emotional symptoms will worsen with increasing exposure to a point, then level off or even improve at the very highest levels of violence exposure. Meanwhile, externalizing symptoms, such as aggression and delinquency, should continue to increase linearly with increasing exposure, even at the very highest levels. In other words, the desensitization model assumes that the relation between CVE and internalizing symptoms is curvilinear, whereas the relation between CVE and externalizing symptoms is linear. According to the theory, this pattern may reflect emotional numbing to violence exposure as youth come to regard violence in their communities as normative and expected, but only at the cost of their own antisocial tendencies, perhaps developing a hardened exterior to shield themselves and loved ones from the violence they encounter.
I analyzed data from the Longitudinal Cohort Study of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), a large, representative study of randomly selected youth. Focusing on three waves of data for 3,480 youth, ages three to 12 at baseline (nine to 18 at outcome), I tested the hypothesis that CVE would predict quadratic increases in internalizing symptoms and linear increases in externalizing symptoms. Indeed, results of both longitudinal (from Wave Two to Wave Three) and cross-sectional (from Wave Three to Wave Three) partially supported this hypothesis, controlling for baseline symptoms and other relevant covariates. Specifically, the quadratic association between CVE and internalizing symptoms emerged in longitudinal analyses, and the linear association between CVE and externalizing symptoms emerged in cross-sectional analyses.
This evidence suggests that emotional numbing or normalization may develop as CVE climbs to the most extreme levels over time. Emotional desensitization may require time to develop, which may account for these more distal effects on internalizing symptoms, whereas the linear effects of CVE on externalizing symptoms may be more immediate (i.e., responding to present threats with violence/aggression). Thus, the more proximal, cross-sectional Wave Three association with externalizing symptoms may dilute any longitudinal effects from earlier CVE.
These findings from a large, representative sample critically support and extend similar findings from the only prior longitudinal investigation of the desensitization model of CVE (Mrug et al., 2016). These findings not only help to clarify how CVE differentially predicts internalizing and externalizing symptoms, but importantly, they challenge developmental psychologists to move beyond analytically convenient assumptions (often implicit in our choice of statistical techniques) and to build creative statistical models that most appropriately and rigorously test complex theories about human development.
In addition to testing a novel model of how CVE relates to youths’ well-being, several other strengths make this paper an important contribution to the literature and made it an exciting project to work on. Unlike the high-risk samples of youth used in many studies of CVE, the PHDCN included youth from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and census tracts. This sampling strategy afforded the unique opportunity to examine a wide range of CVE levels relating to youth outcomes rather than focusing on those with the most extreme exposure, making this paper’s findings especially generalizable, expanding the CVE literature.
Moreover, the detailed CVE measure used in the PHDCN included a broader range of types of both violence witnessing and victimization than is typically examined. Many studies also dichotomously measure only the variety of violent events, that is, whether or not youth had been exposed to each event. In contrast, this study considered both variety and frequency, which uncovered important, nuanced differences among youth along the entire spectrum of CVEfrequency. This feature demonstrates the importance of considering multiple dimensions of CVE (e.g., variety, frequency, type) rather than treating it as one homogenous construct.
I am grateful for the opportunity to share my work with my Div. 7 colleagues. I look forward to continuing to expand the boundaries of our models for human development, both within the CVE literature and across the field of developmental psychology more generally.
References
Gaylord-Harden, N. K., Cunningham, J. A., & Zelencik, B. (2011). Effects of exposure to community violence on internalizing symptoms: Does desensitization to violence occur in African American youth? Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 39, 711–719. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9510-xopens in new window
Mrug, S., Loosier, P. S., & Windle, M. (2008). Violence exposure across multiple contexts: Individual and joint effects on adjustment. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78, 70–84.https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0002-opens in new window 9432.78.1.70
Mrug, S., Madan, A., & Windle, M. (2016). Emotional desensitization to violence contributes to adolescents’ violent behavior. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 44, 75–86.https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-9986-xopens in new window
Ng-Mak, D. S., Salzinger, S., Feldman, R. S., & Stueve, C. A. (2004). Pathologic adaptation to community violence among inner-city youth. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 74, 196–208.https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0002-9432.74.2.196opens in new window