Gender and general strain theory: The gendering of emotional experiences and expressions

Abstract

In their strain theory explanation for the gender gap in delinquency, Broidy and Agnew posit that the joint experience of anger and depression, which is more typical among females than males, should help explain gender differences in delinquency. The authors extend and test their claim using data from a southeastern middle school. Their findings show that females are more likely than males to experience anger and depression concomitantly and that the interaction between anger and depression is important for understanding the gender gap in delinquency. This is not because depression alleviates the impact of anger on delinquency among females, as suggested by gendered strain theory. Instead, depression exacerbates the effect of anger on delinquency among males. This article concludes that the key to understanding links between gender, emotions, and delinquency resides in gendered expressions of emotional responses to stress rather than in gendered experiences of emotions. Keywords gender, emotions, strain theory, delinquency Although few would argue that emotions are inconsequential for understanding human behavior, sociologists often ignore the role of emotions in their explanations of behav-ior (Denzin, 1983; Massey, 2002). This becomes readily apparent when considering the fact that many criminological theories fail to consider that emotions are important predictors of criminal and delinquent behaviors (see Katz, 1988; LaFree, 2007