Social psychological criminology that has examined the relationship between the self
and criminality has ignored aged-graded causal factors, while developmental criminology has
neglected the impact the self-concept has on offending. In this study I contend that
synthesizing self-concept and developmental perspectives provides a more complete and
robust developmental social psychology of offending. Reflected appraisals were identified
as one of the primary dimensions of self-concept. The purpose of this study was to examine
the developmental changes in reflected appraisals and how they affect offending behavior
over time by age and by sex. My dissertation integrates the central concepts from both
perspectives to advance a developmental social psychology of crime that includes self
[reflected appraisals] and age-graded explanations o f offending. To complete this task, a
secondary analysis of the first six waves of the National Youth Survey (NYS) was conducted.
The NYS is a national probability sample of 1.725 adolescents aged 11 - 17 at the time of the
initial interview (wave one). Theoretical models were developed as linear equations to study
the predictiveness of reflected appraisals on subsequent offending by age and by sex.