SELF-CONTROL THROUGH EMERGING ADULTHOOD: INSTABILITY, MULTIDIMENSIONALITY, AND CRIMINOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE

This study assesses self-control theory's (Gottfredson & Hirschi 1990) stability postulate. We advance research on self-control stability in three ways. First, we extend the study of stability beyond high school, estimating group-based trajectory models (GBTM) of self-reports of self-control from age 10 to 25. Second, drawing in part on advances in developmental psychology and social neuroscience, especially the dual systems model of risk taking (e.g., Steinberg 2008), we investigate whether two distinct personality traits-impulsivity and sensation seeking-often conflated in measures of self-control, exhibit divergent developmental patterns. Finding that they do, we also estimate multitrajectory models to identify latent classes of co-occurring developmental patterns for these two traits. We supplement GBTM stability analyses with hierarchical linear models and reliable variance estimates. Lastly, using fixed effects models, we explore whether the observed within-individual changes in the global self-control measure as well as impulsivity and sensation seeking are associated with within-individual changes in crime net of overall age trends. We examine these ideas using five waves of data from a sample of several hundred African American adolescents from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS). Results suggest that self-control is unstable, that distinct patterns of development exist for impulsivity and sensation seeking, and that these changes are uniquely consequential for crime. We conclude by comparing our findings to extant research and discussing the implications for self-control theory.