Intelligence and early life mortality: Findings from a longitudinal sample of youth.

The current study examined whether adolescent IQ predicted risk for mortality by the age of 32. Analyses of data from the Add Health revealed that IQ was related to mortality risk, such that respondents with relatively lower IQs were significantly more likely to experience early life mortality when compared to respondents with relatively higher IQs. This association remained statistically significant even after controlling for a host of covariates such as race, gender, involvement in violent behaviors, levels of self-control, and poverty. The average IQ of deceased respondents was approximately 95, whereas the average IQ of living respondents was about 100.

The Association Between Psychopathic Personality Traits and Victimization and Exposure to Violence in a Sample of Saudi Arabian Youth.

Psychopathic personality traits have been shown to increase the odds of a wide range of antisocial outcomes. Very little research, however, has examined the association between psychopathy and the risk of personal victimization. The current study address this gap in the literature by examining the association between scores on the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy scale and a self-reported measure of victimization by using cross-sectional data drawn from a sample of youth residing in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (N = 311). The results revealed a positive and statistically significant association between LSPR scores and the odds of being victimized. Additional analyses revealed that two mediators-arrest history and exposure to delinquent peers-were related to personal victimization, but neither of these measures mediated the effects of LSPR scores on victimization. Whether these findings would generalize to other nations remains an issue awaiting future research.

Association of Environmental Risk Factors and Personality Traits With Risky Driving Behaviors in a Sample of Young Adults From Saudi Arabia.

Road traffic accidents represent a serious problem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), with rates of such accidents far exceeding the rates in developed nations. Even so, there remains relatively little knowledge regarding the driving behaviors among Saudi Arabians. The current study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining the environmental and trait-based contributors to risky driving behaviors among male and female drivers in the KSA. To do so, a sample of college students from a large university in the KSA was analyzed. The results revealed that delinquent peers, low levels of self-control, and higher levels of driving anger were associated with involvement in risky driving behaviors for both male and female drivers. Understanding the interconnections among peers, self-control, anger, and risky driving behaviors may provide some insight into how to reduce risky driving behaviors. Focusing on ways to reduce exposure to risk factors for risky driving behaviors may be one strategy for reducing these types of driving behaviors.

The Effects of Low Self-Control and Delinquent Peers on Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drug Use in a Sample of Saudi Arabian Youth.

A considerable amount of research has examined patterns of substance use and the potential explanations of it among samples from the United States and other industrialized nations. To date, however, no research has explored these issues in a sample of Saudi Arabian youth. The current study addressed this gap in the literature and examined the lifetime use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco among Saudi Arabian youth. We also examined whether key measures from social learning theory and low self-control theory were able to account for patterns of usage. Data drawn from a sample of nearly 500 youth residing in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, were used. Analysis of the data revealed that 12.7% of youth had smoked cigarettes at least 1 time, 2.6% had consumed alcohol at least once, and 3.0% had used illegal drugs. Moreover, the results of rare-events logistic regression revealed that a measure of delinquent peers was the strongest and most consistent predictor of substance use, while a measure of low self-control was unrelated (or related in a direction opposite to that which was predicted) to the measures of substance use.

The role of parenting in the prediction of criminal involvement: findings from a nationally representative sample of youth and a sample of adopted youth.

The role of parenting in the development of criminal behavior has been the source of a vast amount of research, with the majority of studies detecting statistically significant associations between dimensions of parenting and measures of criminal involvement. An emerging group of scholars, however, has drawn attention to the methodological limitations-mainly genetic confounding-of the parental socialization literature. The current study addressed this limitation by analyzing a sample of adoptees to assess the association between 8 parenting measures and 4 criminal justice outcome measures. The results revealed very little evidence of parental socialization effects on criminal behavior before controlling for genetic confounding and no evidence of parental socialization effects on criminal involvement after controlling for genetic confounding.