How Basic Personality Dimensions Relate to Crime
Study links participants’ HEXACO levels to their criminal convictions records.
Posted December 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Criminal behavior has a negative impact on individuals, economies, and society at large. Beyond the physical and psychological harm inflicted on victims, there are also financial ramifications. For instance, the total costs of crime in the U.S. alone are estimated to be in the trillions of dollars annually. These costs include direct costs such as law enforcement and victims' losses, as well as indirect costs such as private deterrence and time lost to recovery.
Detecting and understanding the factors that account for criminal behavior is thus crucial. While proximal and distal contextual/situational factors definitely play a role, there is also evidence that individuals differ in their tendency to engage in criminal behavior. This implies that personality traits—understood as an individual's tendency to show conceptually related behaviors across situations—should also relate to criminal behavior. A new study (disclosure: including myself as a co-author) shows which basic personality dimensions relate to official records of criminal convictions.
Prominent theories on the relation between personality and crime
Particularly three theories on the relation between personality and crime have been discussed in the respective research literature (for a longer description, see, e.g., Thielmann, 2023 ). First, the self-control theory or general theory of crime posits that low self-control is the primary determinant of criminal behavior. Individuals with low self-control tend to prioritize short-term gratification over long-term consequences, leading to actions that may provide immediate benefits but can result in future disadvantages such as getting caught and being convicted of a criminal activity. Second, situational action theory emphasizes the role of person-situation interactions in criminal behavior. More precisely, it suggests that crime occurs when individuals perceive criminal behavior as a behavioral option and choose to act criminally, which is supposed to be influenced by their morality . Here, individuals’ morality is understood as a personality construct encompassing individual differences in attitudes, beliefs, cognitions, and, ultimately, behavior. Next to individual differences in morality, situational action theory also ascribes importance to self-control, but understands self-control as " a situational concept, not an individual trait."
Finally, general strain theory suggests that individual differences in experiencing strains and stressors are relevant for the occurrence of criminal behavior. More precisely, individuals who experience more and/or more severe strains and stressors are assumed to also have more negative emotions such as anger or frustration. These emotional states, in turn, are assumed to increase the likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior. Given that not everyone reacts to strains and stressors in the same way, individual differences play a crucial role in determining whether someone will act criminally or not.
Implications of these theories for basic personality dimensions
The propositions of self-control theory/general theory of crime, situational action theory, as well as general strain theory can be translated into which basic personality dimensions should relate to crime. In this regard, we relied on the HEXACO Model of Personality as the framework summarizing and structuring the plethora of personality traits in a few basic dimensions. This model has been considered advantageous as compared to other models of basic personality structure, especially by comprising personality characteristics related to anti- and prosocial behavior (see, e.g., here , here , or here ). The HEXACO model includes the dimensions of honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion , agreeableness vs. anger, conscientiousness , and openness to experience .
More concretely, self-control theory/general theory of crime implies that low conscientiousness (due to its conceptual overlap with low self-control) and low honesty-humility (due to, e.g., also representing an individual’s tendency not to resist opportunities and temptations, even if this would imply dishonest or non-cooperative behavior) should relate to criminal behavior. Situational action theory implies that low honesty-humility and, though to a weaker extent, agreeableness vs. anger, should relate to criminal behavior, given that both dimensions encompass aspects of an individual’s tendency concerning morality-related issues. Because situational action theory also ascribes an importance to self-control (even though understood as a situational concept), it further implies low conscientiousness to relate to crime. Finally, general strain theory implies that low agreeableness vs. anger should relate to crime, given that this dimension captures individual difference in experiencing anger or striving for retaliation and revenge when (feeling of) being exploited by others (which can be understood as a strain/stressor).
Based on said theories, we expected low honesty-humility, low agreeableness vs. anger, and low conscientiousness to relate to crime. Further, we expected no relation of extraversion and openness to experience with crime, because these two dimensions do not seem to capture individual differences relevant to crime. Finally, concerning emotionality, we saw arguments speaking for as well as other arguments speaking against a relation with crime, so that we ultimately decided not to state an a priori prediction because we did not feel that the arguments from either perspective clearly outweighed the arguments from the other perspective.
In order to investigate the relations between basic personality dimensions and crime, we linked the levels in the HEXACO dimensions of more than 12,000 individuals to their officially registered criminal convictions. In doing so, we could control for various socio-demographic variables, investigate whether the relations between the HEXACO dimensions and crime differ depending on the type of crime convicted of (for statistical reasons, we had to summarize the different types of crime in rather broad categories, though, which might have masked more fine-grained relations), as well as test for various interaction effects—that is, whether individuals’ levels in two characteristics (e.g., their levels in honesty-humility and conscientiousness) in combination relate to crime. Across the different analyses, the main findings can be summarized as follows:
We found consistent evidence for a relation of low honesty-humility, low emotionality, and low conscientiousness with records of criminal convictions. As expected, we neither found evidence for a meaningful relation between extraversion nor openness to experience and crime. The pattern of results concerning agreeableness was more mixed (e.g., depending on which control variables were included or not), with an overall tendency that this dimension does not substantially relate to crime. From a large-scale perspective, we did also not find much support that the relations between the HEXACO dimensions and crime differ depending on the type of crime one was convicted of, nor did we find much support for interaction effects.
Conclusion and implications
Interestingly, none of the more prominently discussed theories on the relations between personality and crime implies that individual differences captured by all honesty-humility, emotionality, and conscientiousness should play a role in criminal behavior. Therefore, the described investigation—especially due to the advantage of linking personality levels to records of criminal convictions—suggests refining existing theories and/or developing new ones on which personality characteristics relate to crime. At this point, it would be beneficial to combine the personality perspective with other accounts of criminal behavior , such as cost-benefit considerations or more general conditions, feelings, and states such as increased inequality or unemployment.
Bader, M., Lilleholt, L., Schild, C., Hilbig, B. E., Moshagen, M., & Zettler, I. (in press). Basic personality and actual criminal convictions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000537
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Ingo Zettler, Ph.D., is a Professor in Personality and Social Behavior at both the Department of Psychology and the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS), University of Copenhagen.
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