STRENGTHENING SOCIAL-COGNITIVE SKILLS AMONG DISADVANTAGED YOUTH:
A RANDOMIZED FIELD EXPERIMENT

A growing body of research shows that non-cognitive or “social-cognitive” skills such as impulse control, emotion regulation, future orientation and social information processing are strongly correlated with schooling success, criminal behavior, earnings, and other key life outcomes. Yet too little is currently known about the ability of policy to causally intervene and remediate such deficits, particularly among the population at highest risk for adverse life outcomes: disadvantaged adolescent males.

This paper reports the results of a randomized field experiment we carried out in the Chicago Public Schools, which assigned 2,740 disadvantaged male youth in grades 7-10 to either a control group or one year of an intervention that psychologists call cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) designed to strengthen social-cognitive skills by promoting meta-cognition (“thinking about thinking”). The intervention included in-school and after-school components and cost about $1,100 per participant; the average participant attended 13 one-to-two hour sessions. Program participation reduces violent-crime arrests during the program year by 8.1 per 100 youth (44%) and generates sustained gains in schooling outcomes equal to 0.14 standard deviations during the program year and 0.19 standard deviations during the follow-up year, which could lead to higher graduation rates of 3-10 percentage points (7-22%). Our findings are most applicable to policies that expand access to such programs with voluntary participation. Depending on how one monetizes the social costs of crime, the benefit-cost ratio may be as high as 30:1 from reductions in criminal activity alone.

Dr. Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. An expert on the intersection of poverty policy and public health, he has served on three expert committees appointed by the National Academy of Sciences. Co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, his current research examines policy and clinical interventions to reduce violence and to address substance use disorders.