Paul Boxer
Biographic Data
| ID | 120922 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Boxer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Boxer |
| SIGNATURE | BOXER P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7072-9364 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 144 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 47 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Political violence exposure and youth aggression in the context of the social ecological systems and family stress models
Based on the social ecological systems framework and the family stress model, we examine a model in which the family’s exposure to ethnic-political violence in the Middle East predicts negative family functioning, which in turn predicts subsequent harsh physical punishment toward one’s children, and in turn, children’s aggression by late adolescence/early adulthood. Beginning in 2007, we collected four waves of data from Israeli Jewish ( N = 451 …
Advancing a transnational ecological systems framework for research on exposure to violence
Measures of adolescents’ emotional security and exposure to violence in relation to the community, police, and gangs
Clinical Intervention for Gang-Involved Youth
A large literature documenting risk factors for youth aggression, antisocial behavior, and other conduct problems has translated into a large literature outlining best-practice approaches for treating those behaviors. Yet despite general similarities in risk profiles between youth who are gang involved and those who are not, there is presently no empirically validated intervention model for helping gang-involved youth. The chapter discusses the f…
When someone is in a safe place, I believe that your mind rests” emotional security amid community violence
Perceptions of police as a moderator between negative experiences and mental health symptoms
Negative experiences with police present serious risks for mental health. However, interpretation plays a meaningful and little understood role in the effects of those experiences. This study expands on previous work exploring coping responses to negative police experiences and investigates the relation between negative experiences with police and mental health outcomes. Participants ( N = 198) were from a diverse sample of young adults at a mino…
Consequences of Exposure to War Violence
Chronic exposure to ethnic-political and war violence has deleterious effects throughout childhood. Some youths exposed to war violence are more likely to act aggressively afterwards, and some are more likely to experience post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTS symptoms). However, the concordance of these two outcomes is not strong, and it is unclear what discriminates between those who are at more risk for one or the other. Drawing on prior researc…
Exposure to violence predicts callous‐unemotional traits and aggression in adolescence in the context of persistent ethnic‐political conflict and violence
According to social‐cognitive ecological theory, violence exposure increases emotional factors—such as callous‐unemotional (CU) traits—which then contribute to engagement in aggressive behavior. However, previous research has generally not tested this mediational pathway, particularly in the context of persistent ethnic‐political violence exposure. The present study examined associations among violence exposure, CU traits, and aggression in a sam…
Developmental Changes in the Relation between Youth Disclosure and Parenting Behavior
Experiences with police in the community
AIMS: This investigation explores police encounters and police-related coping responses, and the extent to which these relations are impacted by race/ethnicity and beliefs about state authority. METHODS: In two large, diverse samples of undergraduates reporting on their recent experiences in the community, race, experiences with police, and views of police were analyzed as predictors for coping with police presence; attitudes about authority were…
Addressing the inappropriate use of force by police in the United States and beyond
Recent high‐profile incidents involving the deadly application of force in the United States sparked worldwide protests and renewed scrutiny of police practices as well as scrutiny of relations between police officers and minoritized communities. In this report, we consider the inappropriate use of force by police from the perspective of behavioral and social science inquiry related to aggression, violence, and intergroup relations. We examine th…
Longitudinal predictions of young adults' weapons use and criminal behavior from their childhood exposure to violence
In this study, we examine whether youth who are exposed to more weapons violence are subsequently more likely to behave violently with weapons. We use data collected with a 3‐cohort, 4‐wave, 10‐year longitudinal study of 426 high‐risk youth from Flint, Michigan, who were second, fourth, or ninth‐graders in 2006–2007. The data were obtained from individual interviews with the youth, their parents, and their teachers, from archival school and crimi…
Gun Laws and Youth Gun Carrying
The impact of weight-biased media on weight attitudes, self-attitudes, and weight-biased behavior
Neighborhood Violent Crime and Academic Performance
Highlights Research on children's exposure to violence in communities is limited by measurement approaches. Geospatial analytic strategies offer a new way to capture experiences with community violence. Violence around school buildings relates to average achievement of students in those buildings
The role of gender in risk for substance use among justice-involved youth
Serious violent behavior and antisocial outcomes as consequences of exposure to ethnic‐political conflict and violence among Israeli and Palestinian youth
We examine whether cumulative-past and concurrent exposure to ethnic-political violence among Israeli and Palestinian youth predict serious violent behavior and antisocial outcomes toward the in-group and the out-group. We collected four waves of data from 162 Israeli Jewish and 400 Palestinian youths (three age cohorts: 8, 11, and 14 years old) and their parents. The first three waves were consecutive annual assessments, and the fourth was condu…
Anxiety, depression, and offending in the Columbia County longitudinal study
Risk factors for youth violence
The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose. Brad J. Bushman1 Sarah M. Coyne2 Craig A. Anderson3 Kaj Björkqvist4 Paul Boxer5 Kenneth A. Dodge6 Eric F. Dubow7 David P. Farrington8 Douglas A. Gentile9 L. Rowell Huesmann10 Jennifer E. Lansford6 Raymond W. Novaco11 Jamie M. Ostrov12 Marion K. Underwood13 Wayne A. Warburton14 Michele L. Ybarra15 1School of Communication, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 2Sch…
Effectiveness of Multisystemic Therapy for gang-involved youth offenders
Childhood and adolescent risk and protective factors for violence in adulthood
Examining the moderating role of gang involvement on the context and impact of victimization
Purpose – Research suggests that gang-involved youth are more likely than non-gang youth to experience victimization. However, very little research has addressed the issue of whether the relationship between gang involvement and victimization depends on the context in which victimization takes place. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of the relation between gang involvement and violent victimization in both street and school cont…
The Longitudinal Effects of Chronic Mediated Exposure to Political Violence on Ideological Beliefs About Political Conflicts Among Youths
This study examines the effects of chronic (i.e., repeated and cumulative) mediated exposure to political violence on ideological beliefs regarding political conflict. It centers on these effects on young viewers, from preadolescents to adolescents. Ideological beliefs refers here to support of war, perception of threat to one's nation, and normative beliefs concerning aggression toward the out-group. A longitudinal study was conducted on a sampl…
Consensus on media violence effects
We summarize the main findings of Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015), highlight its empirical contributions, and note interesting patterns and implications for future research. The results demonstrate that consensus exists among experts on the reality of harmful media violence effects on children and adolescents. We note likely differences in the makeup of the different samples and how these might have affected the results. This comment also pr…
Gang involvement moderates the effectiveness of evidence-based intervention for justice-involved youth
Continuity of aggression from childhood to early adulthood as a predictor of life outcomes
Using data from the Columbia County Longitudinal Study, a 40‐year longitudinal study following an entire county's population of third‐grade students from age 8 to 48, we examine questions about the long‐term consequences of aggressive and antisocial behavior in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. We found moderate levels of continuity of aggression from age 8 to 48 both for males and for females. Contrary to what some have proposed, we f…
Social‐cognitive mediators of the relation of environmental and emotion regulation factors to children's aggression
Tested a theoretical model in which social cognitions about aggression partially mediated the relation of environmental and emotion regulation factors to children's aggressive behavior. An ethnically diverse sample of 778 children (57% girls) in grades 4–6 from both urban and suburban schools participated. Measures included exposure to aggression (seeing/hearing about aggression, victimization), emotion regulation (impulsivity, anger control), so…
Initial Investigation of Jewish Early Adolescents’ Ethnic Identity, Stress, and Coping
Ethnic identity was examined as a source of stress and as a coping resource among Jewish sixth through eighth graders (N = 75). Over 50% of the students reported having experienced various ethnic-related stressors in the past year (e.g., being restricted from activities due to the Sabbath, experiencing anti-Semitic comments). Jewish early adolescents also endorsed ethnic and religious coping strategies from three coping scale factors: Seeking God…
Middle childhood and adolescent contextual and personal predictors of adult educational and occupational outcomes
The authors examined the prediction of occupational attainment by age 40 from contextual and personal variables assessed during childhood and adolescence in 2 participant samples: (a) the Columbia County Longitudinal Study, a study of 856 third graders in a semirural county in New York State that began in 1960, and (b) the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, a study of 369 eight-year-olds in Jyväskylä, Finland, tha…
Is It Bad to Be Good? An Exploration of Aggressive and Prosocial Behavior Subtypes in Adolescence
The Role of Violent Media Preference in Cumulative Developmental Risk for Violence and General Aggression
Childhood and adolescent risk and protective factors for violence in adulthood
Negative Stereotypes of Ethnic Outgroups
Ethno-political conflict impacts thousands of youth globally and has been associated with a number of negative psychological outcomes. Extant literature has mostly addressed the adverse emotional and behavioral outcomes of exposure while failing to examine change over time in social-cognitive factors in contexts of ethno-political conflict. Using cohort-sequential longitudinal data, the present study examines ethnic variation in the development o…
Serious violent behavior and antisocial outcomes as consequences of exposure to ethnic‐political conflict and violence among Israeli and Palestinian youth
We examine whether cumulative-past and concurrent exposure to ethnic-political violence among Israeli and Palestinian youth predict serious violent behavior and antisocial outcomes toward the in-group and the out-group. We collected four waves of data from 162 Israeli Jewish and 400 Palestinian youths (three age cohorts: 8, 11, and 14 years old) and their parents. The first three waves were consecutive annual assessments, and the fourth was condu…
The Longitudinal Effects of Chronic Mediated Exposure to Political Violence on Ideological Beliefs About Political Conflicts Among Youths
This study examines the effects of chronic (i.e., repeated and cumulative) mediated exposure to political violence on ideological beliefs regarding political conflict. It centers on these effects on young viewers, from preadolescents to adolescents. Ideological beliefs refers here to support of war, perception of threat to one's nation, and normative beliefs concerning aggression toward the out-group. A longitudinal study was conducted on a sampl…
Foreign Wars and Domestic Prejudice
This study was based on the theory that adolescents view scenes of violent ethnic conflicts in the mass media through the lens of their own ethnicity, and that the resulting social-cognitive reactions influence their negative stereotypes about similar ethnic groups in their own country. We interviewed 89 Jewish and 180 Arab American high school students about their exposure to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their social cognitive reactions to …
Intensity of Aggression in Childhood as a Predictor of Different Forms of Adult Aggression
This study examined the prediction of different forms of adult aggression in two countries from child and adolescent aggression. It was based on two longitudinal projects: the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS; N = 196 boys and 173 girls) conducted in Finland and the Columbia County Longitudinal Study (CCLS; N = 436 males and 420 females) conducted in the USA. The same peer-nominated items for aggression wer…
Addressing the inappropriate use of force by police in the United States and beyond
Recent high‐profile incidents involving the deadly application of force in the United States sparked worldwide protests and renewed scrutiny of police practices as well as scrutiny of relations between police officers and minoritized communities. In this report, we consider the inappropriate use of force by police from the perspective of behavioral and social science inquiry related to aggression, violence, and intergroup relations. We examine th…
Gang involvement moderates the effectiveness of evidence-based intervention for justice-involved youth
The impact of emotional and physical violence during pregnancy on maternal and child health at one year post-partum
Longitudinal predictions of young adults' weapons use and criminal behavior from their childhood exposure to violence
In this study, we examine whether youth who are exposed to more weapons violence are subsequently more likely to behave violently with weapons. We use data collected with a 3‐cohort, 4‐wave, 10‐year longitudinal study of 426 high‐risk youth from Flint, Michigan, who were second, fourth, or ninth‐graders in 2006–2007. The data were obtained from individual interviews with the youth, their parents, and their teachers, from archival school and crimi…
Neighborhood Violent Crime and Academic Performance
Highlights Research on children's exposure to violence in communities is limited by measurement approaches. Geospatial analytic strategies offer a new way to capture experiences with community violence. Violence around school buildings relates to average achievement of students in those buildings
Covariation of self‐ and other‐directed aggression among inpatient youth
Although other‐ and self‐directed aggression covary in very high‐risk youth, these forms of aggression infrequently are studied simultaneously. Understanding better their covariation is an important task for improving services to high‐risk youth. In this study, data from the clinical records of 476 youth admitted to secure inpatient treatment were analyzed to examine relations among self‐ and other‐directed aggression exhibit before and during in…
Developmental Changes in the Relation between Youth Disclosure and Parenting Behavior
Gun Laws and Youth Gun Carrying
The role of gender in risk for substance use among justice-involved youth
Risk factors for youth violence
The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose. Brad J. Bushman1 Sarah M. Coyne2 Craig A. Anderson3 Kaj Björkqvist4 Paul Boxer5 Kenneth A. Dodge6 Eric F. Dubow7 David P. Farrington8 Douglas A. Gentile9 L. Rowell Huesmann10 Jennifer E. Lansford6 Raymond W. Novaco11 Jamie M. Ostrov12 Marion K. Underwood13 Wayne A. Warburton14 Michele L. Ybarra15 1School of Communication, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 2Sch…
Youth Gangs and Adolescent Development
Although there is a wealth of data on youth gangs available from criminological research, there is a relatively small empirical and theoretical developmental literature on youth gangs. Indeed, only a handful of studies have addressed critical developmental issues on youth gangs. This special section presents five new studies approaching the study of youth gangs from a broad developmental perspective, underscoring the need for ongoing inquiry link…
Experiences with police in the community
AIMS: This investigation explores police encounters and police-related coping responses, and the extent to which these relations are impacted by race/ethnicity and beliefs about state authority. METHODS: In two large, diverse samples of undergraduates reporting on their recent experiences in the community, race, experiences with police, and views of police were analyzed as predictors for coping with police presence; attitudes about authority were…
Anxiety, depression, and offending in the Columbia County longitudinal study
Initial Investigation of Jewish Early Adolescents’ Ethnic Identity, Stress, and Coping
Ethnic identity was examined as a source of stress and as a coping resource among Jewish sixth through eighth graders (N = 75). Over 50% of the students reported having experienced various ethnic-related stressors in the past year (e.g., being restricted from activities due to the Sabbath, experiencing anti-Semitic comments). Jewish early adolescents also endorsed ethnic and religious coping strategies from three coping scale factors: Seeking God…
Social‐cognitive mediators of the relation of environmental and emotion regulation factors to children's aggression
Tested a theoretical model in which social cognitions about aggression partially mediated the relation of environmental and emotion regulation factors to children's aggressive behavior. An ethnically diverse sample of 778 children (57% girls) in grades 4–6 from both urban and suburban schools participated. Measures included exposure to aggression (seeing/hearing about aggression, victimization), emotion regulation (impulsivity, anger control), so…
Is It Bad to Be Good? An Exploration of Aggressive and Prosocial Behavior Subtypes in Adolescence
Children's beliefs about the continuity of aggression
Elementary school students (N = 139) read vignettes describing aggressive peers and rated the extent to which they believed the peers' aggression would continue over time and in different contexts. Children also rated their social and moral acceptance of aggression, and how difficult it would be to help the vignette characters desist from aggression. Teachers rated participants' aggressive and prosocial behaviors. Results indicated that aggressio…
Special Reviewers
Middle childhood and adolescent contextual and personal predictors of adult educational and occupational outcomes
The authors examined the prediction of occupational attainment by age 40 from contextual and personal variables assessed during childhood and adolescence in 2 participant samples: (a) the Columbia County Longitudinal Study, a study of 856 third graders in a semirural county in New York State that began in 1960, and (b) the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, a study of 369 eight-year-olds in Jyväskylä, Finland, tha…
Aggression in very high-risk youth
The goal of this study was to examine the utility of clinical records of psychiatrically hospitalized youth for predicting critical incidents during treatment. Intake data from inpatients (N = 484, mean age = 14 years) in a secure psychiatric facility were coded for the presence of theoretically based individual and contextual risk factor information and analyzed prospectively to predict youths' involvement in incidents of seclusion and restraint…
Fear reactivity and effortful control in overt and relational bullying
This study examined the roles of fear reactivity and emotional regulatory abilities in overt and relational bullying behaviors. Survey data were collected from 124 middle school students (mean age=10.3 years, 47% males, 61% Caucasian) and their teachers in the fall and spring of a school year. Surveys included teacher‐ and self‐rated measures of students' overt and relational bullying along with self‐reported fear reactivity and effortful control…
Long-term Effects of Parents' Education on Children's Educational and Occupational Success
We examine the prediction of individuals' educational and occupational success at age 48 from contextual and personal variables assessed during their middle childhood and late adolescence. We focus particularly on the predictive role of the parents' educational level during middle childhood, controlling for other indices of socioeconomic status and children's IQ, and the mediating roles of negative family interactions, childhood behavior, and lat…
Intensity of Aggression in Childhood as a Predictor of Different Forms of Adult Aggression
This study examined the prediction of different forms of adult aggression in two countries from child and adolescent aggression. It was based on two longitudinal projects: the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS; N = 196 boys and 173 girls) conducted in Finland and the Columbia County Longitudinal Study (CCLS; N = 436 males and 420 females) conducted in the USA. The same peer-nominated items for aggression wer…
Continuity of aggression from childhood to early adulthood as a predictor of life outcomes
Using data from the Columbia County Longitudinal Study, a 40‐year longitudinal study following an entire county's population of third‐grade students from age 8 to 48, we examine questions about the long‐term consequences of aggressive and antisocial behavior in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood. We found moderate levels of continuity of aggression from age 8 to 48 both for males and for females. Contrary to what some have proposed, we f…
The Role of Violent Media Preference in Cumulative Developmental Risk for Violence and General Aggression
Responding to peer victimisation in middle childhood
Children's responses to peer victimisation are thought to influence the duration of victimisation, yet research has not clearly indicated the best ways for young people to respond. In the current study, students (n = 403, mean age of nine years, 11 months, 55% female, 53% Caucasian) reported on their peer victimisation experiences and responses at the beginning and end of a school year. Teachers also reported on students' victimisation experience…
Covariation of self‐ and other‐directed aggression among inpatient youth
Although other‐ and self‐directed aggression covary in very high‐risk youth, these forms of aggression infrequently are studied simultaneously. Understanding better their covariation is an important task for improving services to high‐risk youth. In this study, data from the clinical records of 476 youth admitted to secure inpatient treatment were analyzed to examine relations among self‐ and other‐directed aggression exhibit before and during in…
Educational aspiration–expectation discrepancies
This study examines whether disconnection between educational aspirations and expectations is associated with socioeconomic status, academic performance, academic risk‐related behaviors and related psychosocial factors in an ethnically and economically diverse sample of early adolescents from a public middle school ( N = 761). Results suggest that students who aspire to achieve more than they expect to achieve also are likely to have more economi…
The impact of emotional and physical violence during pregnancy on maternal and child health at one year post-partum
Cognitive and emotional covariates of violence exposure among former prisoners
In this study, formerly incarcerated men ( N = 123) were assessed for their experiences with violence in the community as well as their current behavioral and mental health status (antisocial behavior and emotional distress). Participants also completed measures of two constructs theorized to moderate relations between exposure to violence and outcomes: cognitive beliefs supporting aggressive responding and negative emotional reactivity to witnes…
Foreign Wars and Domestic Prejudice
This study was based on the theory that adolescents view scenes of violent ethnic conflicts in the mass media through the lens of their own ethnicity, and that the resulting social-cognitive reactions influence their negative stereotypes about similar ethnic groups in their own country. We interviewed 89 Jewish and 180 Arab American high school students about their exposure to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, their social cognitive reactions to …
Coping With Violence
Interpersonal violence is present at all levels of influence in the social ecology and can have comprehensive and devastating effects on child and adolescent development through multiple simultaneous channels of exposure. Children’s experiences with violence have been linked with a range of behavioral and mental health difficulties including posttraumatic stress disorder and aggressive behavior. In this article, we offer a conceptual framework de…
Youth Gangs and Adolescent Development
Although there is a wealth of data on youth gangs available from criminological research, there is a relatively small empirical and theoretical developmental literature on youth gangs. Indeed, only a handful of studies have addressed critical developmental issues on youth gangs. This special section presents five new studies approaching the study of youth gangs from a broad developmental perspective, underscoring the need for ongoing inquiry link…
Negative Stereotypes of Ethnic Outgroups
Ethno-political conflict impacts thousands of youth globally and has been associated with a number of negative psychological outcomes. Extant literature has mostly addressed the adverse emotional and behavioral outcomes of exposure while failing to examine change over time in social-cognitive factors in contexts of ethno-political conflict. Using cohort-sequential longitudinal data, the present study examines ethnic variation in the development o…
Country, sex, and parent occupational status
Using data from two American and one Finnish long-term longitudinal studies, we examined continuity of general aggression from age 8 to physical aggression in early adulthood (age 21-30) and whether continuity of aggression differed by country, sex, and parent occupational status. In all samples, childhood aggression was assessed via peer nominations and early adulthood aggression via self-reports. Multi-group structural equation models revealed …
Consensus on media violence effects
We summarize the main findings of Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015), highlight its empirical contributions, and note interesting patterns and implications for future research. The results demonstrate that consensus exists among experts on the reality of harmful media violence effects on children and adolescents. We note likely differences in the makeup of the different samples and how these might have affected the results. This comment also pr…
Gang involvement moderates the effectiveness of evidence-based intervention for justice-involved youth
Childhood and adolescent risk and protective factors for violence in adulthood
Psychology (45 works) · Developmental psychology (27 works) · Medicine (27 works) · Poison control (23 works) · Clinical Psychology (21 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (19 works) · Suicide prevention (19 works) · Aggression (18 works) · Clinical Psychology (18 works) · Injury prevention (18 works)