Self-Control, Intoxication and Violence: A Cross-National Comparison of English and Swedish Adolescents

Abstract This paper draws upon situational action theory (SAT) to frame and test the relationship between alcohol intoxication and violence in adolescents from on-going longitudinal studies in two European countries: the Malmö Individual and Neighbourhood Development Study (MINDS, N = 514) based in Malmö, Sweden, and the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS + , N = 704) based in Peterborough, UK. Using data from participants at ages 15–16, this paper assesses if SAT’s explanation for the relationship between adolescents’ alcohol use and violence is applicable in both countries, despite significant differences in their rates of alcohol use and violence. Theorizing that alcohol use influences violence by (temporarily) reducing a person’s ability to exercise self-control, the paper anticipates and finds a robust interaction between alcohol use and self-control in predicting violence in both samples. To account for differences in the samples’ need to exercise self-control, the paper also examines differences in violence-relevant moral attitudes and exposure. By contextualizing intoxication, this analysis is able to account for all statistical differences in violence between British and Swedish adolescents, suggesting that while British and Swedish youths differ in their need to exercise self-control to choose non-violent alternatives, there are no differences by country in the relationship between adolescents’ ability to exercise self-control, frequency of intoxication, and choice of violence. This is consistent with SAT’s proposition that the process through which people come to see and choose their action alternatives is universal, while the inputs to that process may vary by population and context.