Punishment and personality: Low agreeableness and low conscientiousness as mediators of the inconsistent/angry parenting–delinquency relationships

Abstract

This study’s purpose was to determine whether the personality trait dimensions of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness mediate the relationship between mid-adolescent inconsistent/angry parenting and late adolescent delinquency. A sample of 3701 youth from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children served as participants in this study. A path analysis with two independent variables (inconsistent parenting, angry parenting) and five mediators (Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Openness) revealed that, consistent with predictions, Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were the only two personality dimensions to mediate the angry parenting–later delinquency relationship. These results suggest that personality dimensions known to correlate with offending behavior (i.e. low Agreeableness and low Conscientiousness) may be among the mechanisms responsible for linking social conditions like parenting punishment styles marked by angry parenting to youth behaviors like delinquency.