Abstract:

Existing studies of psychological peculiarities of delinquent adolescents in most cases focused on a limited range of characteristics, whereas the decision making factors still is poorly understood. The purpose of this study is to establish features of decision making factors in delinquent adolescents. The study used Melbourne decision making questionnaire and Personality´s decision making questionnaire by T. V. Kornilova. For statistical processing of results used the Student´s t- test (for independent samples). Sampling - 96 boys, older adolescents. 47 juvenile offenders were included to the first group (delinquent adolescents). The second group includes 49 pupils of secondary school with normative behavior. Delinquent adolescents demonstrated significantly higher scores on scales «hypervigilance», «procrastination», «back-passing», «risk readiness» and significantly lower rate on a scale of «rationality». Specificity of the decision making factors of regulatory nature, combined with lack of rationality and predominance of the risk readiness as a personal component of the decision-making system shows a preference of unconstructive components of the system in delinquent adolescents that requires a specially organized correction and formation of socially appropriate and effective means of organizing activities and behavior.

Keywords: back-passing, decision making factors, delinquent adolescents, hypervigilance, procrastination, rationality, risk readiness, vigilance