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Parental Arrest and Adolescent Delinquency in Singapore: The Moderating Roles of Narcissism, Callous-Unemotional Traits, and Impulsivity

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Abstract

Objectives

Adolescent delinquency is an important issue, and of universal concern. Parental arrest history has been recognized to have negative impacts on children’s delinquent behavior. This study focused on the predictors of adolescent delinquency, including parental influences and adolescents’ own personal traits.

Methods

We explored the relationship between parental arrest and children’s delinquency among 1027 Singaporean secondary school students aged between 12 and 19 years (Mage = 14.10). Specifically, we used hierarchical multiple regression to examine the moderating effects that different dimensions of psychopathic traits, including narcissism, callous-unemotional (CU) traits, and impulsivity, have on the relation between parental arrest and adolescent delinquency.

Results

Findings suggested that parental arrest significantly and positively predicted the delinquent behavior of their children. Although narcissism, CU traits, and impulsivity showed significant main effects on delinquency, only narcissism and CU traits, but not impulsivity, were found to significantly interact with parental arrest in predicting adolescent delinquency. With a high level of narcissism and CU traits, adolescents whose parents have had a prior arrest history were more likely to display higher levels of delinquent behavior.

Conclusions

These findings shed light on the importance of reducing adolescents’ narcissism and CU traits when developing prevention and intervention strategies to combat delinquency of adolescents with arrested parents in an Asian context.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Ministry of Education (Singapore) AcRF Tier 2 Grant (MOE2012-T2-1-079).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong

    Xiang Li

  2. Psychological Studies Academic Group, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Rebecca P. Ang

Authors
  1. Xiang Li
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  2. Rebecca P. Ang
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Correspondence to Xiang Li.

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Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Nanyang Technological University. The Ministry of Education of Singapore and the school principals also approved the data collection at the schools.

Informed Consent

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

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Li, X., Ang, R.P. Parental Arrest and Adolescent Delinquency in Singapore: The Moderating Roles of Narcissism, Callous-Unemotional Traits, and Impulsivity. J Child Fam Stud 28, 776–783 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-01311-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-01311-6

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