Aggression, attributional style, and locus of control among imprisoned migrants from the former Soviet Union

In the 1990s, over two million migrants from the former Soviet Union with German ancestry came to Germany, a small number of whom committed offences.

The aim of this study is to investigate aggression, locus of control, and attributional style in these (male) migrants imprisoned in Germany.

Three groups of men with German ancestry were compared: 1.36 prisoners migrating into Germany from the former Soviet Union (migrant-P), 2.31 migrating into Germany from the former Soviet Union without a history of offending (community sample; C), and 3.40 German prisoners with no migration experience (native-P).

Aggression was high among all prisoners relative to nonoffending migrants. Prisoners tended to be under-achievers educationally compared with community living migrants. Imprisoned migrants had scores on locus of control and on attribution scales of feeling more influenced by fate and other external factors than had the community migrants, but in a regression model with aggression as the dependent variable and locus of control and attributional style measures as the independent variables, only external attributional style with respect to failure was significantly related to aggression.

External attributional style appears to be linked to the probability of aggressive behaviours, leading to unlawful acts and imprisonment. Regardless of whether a person has a migration history or not, as attribution of failure among these relatively low-achieving prisoners was associated with aggression, loosening these attributional tendencies in therapy might help to reduce aggression. Migration per se was not problematic in these respects in this sample.