The Association of Personality Type in Childhood With Violence in Adolescence

The relationship of personality type at age 6 years to interpersonal violence at age 12 years was investigated. Participants from the Child Sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth with complete data measures for the three time periods were categorized into one of the three personality types at age 6: under-controlled, resilient, and over-controlled. At age 12, participants assigned to the under-controlled personality type 6 years earlier were more likely than those assigned to the resilient or over-controlled personality types to report that they had hurt someone seriously at least once in the past year. The association of childhood personality to interpersonal violence 6 years later was not mediated by peer rejection or associations with deviant peers.