Policy-makers are considering large-scale programs aimed at self-control to improve citizens’ health and wealth and reduce crime. Experimental and economic studies suggest such programs could reap benefits. Yet, is self-control important for the health, wealth, and public safety of the population? Following a cohort of 1,000 children from birth to the age of 32 y, we show that childhood self-control predicts physical health, substance dependence, personal finances, and criminal offending outcomes, following a gradient of self-control. Effects of children's self-control could be disentangled from their intelligence and social class as well as from mistakes they made as adolescents. In another cohort of 500 sibling-pairs, the sibling with lower self-control had poorer outcomes, despite shared family background. Interventions addressing self-control might reduce a panoply of societal costs, save taxpayers money, and promote prosperity.
This article reports a comparison on outcomes of 26-year-old males who were defined several
years ago in the Dunedin longitudinal study as exhibiting childhood-onset versus adolescent-onset
antisocial behavior and who were indistinguishable on delinquent offending in adolescence.
Previous studies of these groups in childhood and adolescence showed that childhood-onset
delinquents had inadequate parenting, neurocognitive problems, undercontrolled temperament,
severe hyperactivity, psychopathic personality traits, and violent behavior. Adolescent-onset
delinquents were not distinguished by these features. Here followed to age 26 years, the
childhood-onset delinquents were the most elevated on psychopathic personality traits,
mental-health problems, substance dependence, numbers of children, financial problems, work
problems, and drug-related and violent crime, including violence against women and children. The
adolescent-onset delinquents at 26 years were less extreme but elevated on impulsive personality
traits, mental-health problems, substance dependence, financial problems, and property offenses.
A third group of men who had been aggressive as children but not very delinquent as adolescents
emerged as low-level chronic offenders who were anxious, depressed, socially isolated, and had
financial and work problems. These findings support the theory of life-course-persistent and
adolescence-limited antisocial behavior but also extend it. Findings recommend intervention with
all aggressive children and with all delinquent adolescents, to prevent a variety of maladjustments
in adult life.
Mental disorders traditionally have been viewed as distinct, episodic, and categorical conditions. This view has been challenged by evidence that many disorders are sequentially comorbid, recurrent/chronic, and exist on a continuum. Using the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, we examined the structure of psychopathology, taking into account dimensionality, persistence, co-occurrence, and sequential comorbidity of mental disorders across 20 years, from adolescence to midlife. Psychiatric disorders were initially explained by three higher-order factors (Internalizing, Externalizing, and Thought Disorder) but explained even better with one General Psychopathology dimension. We have called this dimension the p factor because it conceptually parallels a familiar dimension in psychological science: the g factor of general intelligence. Higher p scores are associated with more life impairment, greater familiality, worse developmental histories, and more compromised early-life brain function. The p factor explains why it is challenging to find causes, consequences, biomarkers, and treatments with specificity to individual mental disorders. Transdiagnostic approaches may improve research.
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