796 vIII. EMERGING  ISSuES AND  NEW  DIRECTIONS
found that such programs had detrimental 
effects on postvisit criminal behavior (Petro -
sino, Turpin-  Petrosino, & Buehler, 2003).
A more extreme form of preventive aware -
ness programs are boot camps modeled after 
military programs. These boot camps hinge 
on Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) gen -
eral theory of crime, which proposes that 
deviancy is a consequence of inadequate 
constraints on an individual’s behavior. The 
discipline that is integral to boot camps 
should improve juveniles’ self-  control and 
decrease future delinquency and recidivism. 
However, similar to awareness programs, a 
meta-  analysis suggests that boot camps have 
been largely ineffective in reducing markers 
of antisocial behavioral such as recidivism 
(MacKenzie, Wilson, & Kider, 2001).
Another type of intervention for antiso -
cial behavior, social-  cognitive skills train -
ing, emphasizes changing the cognitive and 
information processing mechanisms that 
presumably underlie delinquent behavior. It 
draws on research suggesting that aggres -
sive people tend to attribute others’ actions 
to hostile intentions and to attend to hostile 
cues more than do less aggressive people 
(e.g., Crick & Dodge, 1996; Dodge, 1993). 
Thus, by changing these maladaptive cogni -
tions, one can reduce aggressive behaviors. 
Programs in this family target these cogni -
tions by changing attention and response to 
social cues, updating goals and contingent 
responses to cues, and training those re -
sponses as habits (Crick & Dodge, 1994).
The prototypical example of this ap -
proach is the GREAT program (Guiding 
Responsibility and Expectations in Adoles -
cents Today and Tomorrow; Meyer, Allison, 
Reese, Gay, & Multisite Violence Prevention 
Program, 2004) Although the program has 
been successful in changing social-  cognitive 
information processing, it is less clear 
whether this results in behavioral change 
and whether the changes are long-  lasting. 
A series of reviews and meta-  analyses of the 
GREAT program suggests that the program 
may have detrimental effects: Participants in 
the program reported increased aggression 
and support for proaggression norms rela -
tive to controls. However, for the children at 
highest risk, the results suggest that the pro -
gram is behaviorally effective (Simon, Ikida, 
& Smith, 2008).Although many of the juvenile awareness, 
boot camp, and social-  cognitive interven -
tions are largely ineffective and potentially 
harmful, there is considerable heterogeneity 
in the effectiveness of programs within cat -
egories. A recent meta-  analysis of the effec -
tiveness of preventive and treatment-  based 
interventions on adolescents’ antisocial be -
havior found that prevention-  based inter -
ventions were less effective than therapy- 
based interventions in reducing antisocial 
behavior (Sawyer, Borduin, & Dopp, 2015). 
The effectiveness of more therapeutic ap -
proaches relative to other approaches sug -
gests that notable change likely takes time to 
occur. Several key moderators indicate that 
including peer group members in the inter -
vention protocol was effective for younger 
boys but not adolescent boys, and that par -
ent involvement was more effective in sam -
ples that included a higher proportion of mi -
norities. Another meta-  analysis that focused 
specifically on which program features were 
associated with positive intervention effects 
identified intervention quality as a key fac -
tor (Lipsey, 2009). Overall, these mixed re -
sults suggest that therapeutic approaches for 
high-risk youth may be effective for antiso -
cial tendencies, but despite considerable time 
and effort, it is unclear whether aspects of 
personality changed, or whether situations 
were changed such that opportunities for 
antisocial behaviors were reduced.
Clinical  Interventions
Within the clinical domain, a number of 
studies incorporate personality trait mea -
sures as one way to assess the pre- and 
posttreatment effects of therapeutic inter -
ventions on individuals’ functioning (e.g., 
Bagby, Joffe, Parker, Kalemba, & Harkness, 
1995; Piedmont, 2001; M. Smith, Glass, & 
Miller, 1980; Trull, Useda, Costa, & Mc -
Crae, 1995). Therapy can be considered a 
direct intervention on personality, with the 
goal to change an aspect of a person’s mal -
adaptive behaviors and/or thought process 
(Allemand & Flückiger, 2017). A recent, 
large-scale meta-  analysis found broad evi -
dence for positive changes in personality as a 
response to therapy. Compared to controls, 
personality evidenced large magnitudes of 
change ( d ≈ 0.47), across different therapy 