Bold, mean and disinhibited: getting specific about the mediating role of self-control and antisocial outcomes in youth

Abstract

Self-control and psychopathy are correlated with antisocial behaviors among diverse samples, and a spate of recent studies examined their direct associations with criminal outcomes. However, research has largely overlooked mediation effects between psychopathy, self-control and deviant outcomes. The current study examined self-control mediation effects related to the triarchic psychopathy construct and juvenile delinquency, crime seriousness, conduct disorder (CD), and aggression outcomes. The sample consisted of N = 567 (M = 15.91 years, SD = 0.99, range = 14–18 years) southern-European youth from Portugal. Study design was cross-sectional, quantitative and non-experimental. Mediation analysis using path analysis procedures indicated that low self-control mediates the relation between the Boldness, Disinhibition and Meanness factors of the triarchic psychopathy construct and the delinquency, crime seriousness, CD and aggression outcomes. Findings suggest that self-control is a mediator of triarchic psychopathic features and diverse externalizing behavior outcomes, which adds specificity to their interrelationship as general predictors of antisocial behavior.

Key words:

• juvenile delinquency
• mediation
• self-control
• triarchic psychopathic traits

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Pedro Pechorro declared no conflicts of interest

Matt DeLisi declared no conflicts of interest

Rui Abrunhosa Gonçalves declared no conflicts of interest

João Maroco declared no conflicts of interest

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Portuguese State Office of Education (authorization no. 0618500001) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study

Data are available upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 Two substantive points are important for clarification. First, a legitimate question is why we modeled self-control as a mediator of psychopathy as opposed to psychopathy as a mediator of self-control. Psychopathy is a low-prevalence phenomenon in the general population with most community members exhibiting zero clinical traits of the disorder or scoring very low on psychopathy measures (Coid et al., 2009; DeLisi, 2016; Salekin et al., 2001). In contrast, everyone has some self-control capacity ranging on a continuum from low to high, thus we wanted to see whether that self-control capacity mediated associations between psychopathic features and externalizing outcomes. Second, we recognize that the concept of successful psychopathy is from the perspective of the psychopath: he or she did not end up in police custody despite aversive personality functioning. As such, adaptive outcomes for the psychopathic person often come at the expense of other persons (e.g. coworkers, family members, constituents) who are in the successful psychopath’s environment.

2 Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990, p. 94) also noted the nuanced relationship between self-control and psychopathic or antisocial personality disorder features. In their influential theory, they advised, ‘the idea of an antisocial personality defined by certain behavioral consequences is too positivistic or deterministic, suggesting that the offender must do certain things given his antisocial personality. Thus, we would say only that the subjects in question are more likely to commit criminal acts (as the data indicate they are). We do not make commission of criminal acts as the definition of the individual with low self-control.’

Additional information

Funding

This study was partially conducted at the Psychology Research Centre [CIPsi/UM PSI/01662] School of Psychology, University of Minho, and was partially funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education [UID/PSI/01662/2019] through the Portuguese State budget [UIDB/01662/2020].