Arts activities may improve self-control and reduce antisocial behaviour among teenagers

teacher encourages choir Teenagers who take part in arts and cultural activities, such as dance, drama, reading and going to concerts, are less likely to engage in antisocial and criminalised behaviour up to two years later, according to a new study by UCL and University of Florida researchers. For the peer-reviewed study, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence (JOYO), researchers looked at data from more than 25,000 teenagers in the United States who had filled out questionnaires over several years. They measured the teenagers' overall engagement with arts activities based on a wide range of factors, from involvement in school clubs, orchestras, choirs, and arts classes outside school, to whether they had visited museums or been to concerts, or read on their own. They found that the more of these activities the teenagers were involved in, the less likely they were to report being engaged in antisocial behaviour - ranging from misbehaving at school, to getting into fights, to criminalised behaviour such as stealing and selling drugs - both at the time of the first survey and when they were asked again about antisocial behaviour one and two years later. The team also found that teenagers and young people who were more engaged in the arts were likely to have better self-control scores and view antisocial behaviour negatively. These outcomes have previously been found to make young people less likely to engage in antisocial and criminalised behaviours. The research was carried out as part of the EpiArts Lab, a US National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab.