When stressed, you might get depressed—but will you also commit crime? Between-person correlations, within-person changes, and what criminology might get wrong about stress

Stress process theories, which are foundational in sociology, posit that subjective stress causes emotional and behavioral problems. Though the link between stress and mental health is well-established, claims that stress causes criminal behavior remain contentious despite widespread acceptance in criminology. We test both pathways using two-wave panel data from Bangladesh (n=978 observations; 489 participants) and between-person and within-person estimation. Between-person analysis confirms established patterns: those reporting more stress also report more negative emotions and criminal intentions. However, within-person analysis, which adjusts for time-invariant confounding by design, reveals a striking asymmetry. Changes in stress reliably predict changes in negative emotions but not criminal intentions. Although residents of disadvantaged urban communities report more stress, within-person effects on crime remain near-zero. These findings validate sociological stress process theories for mental health outcomes while raising questions about criminological claims that stress causes crime. The between/within divergence suggests that stress-crime correlations in prior research may largely reflect selection into stressful circumstances rather than causal effects of stress on criminal intentions. Methodologically, results demonstrate how between-person correlations can systematically mislead about causal processes.