Comparison of Social Interest and Borderline Personality Component in Delinquent and Non-delinquent Adolescents in Mashhad, Iran

Introduction: Delinquency refers to the commitment of actions and behaviors which are against the law and social values. It is widely believed that identifying the factors related to delinquency is one of the most important actions for preventing crimes. The aim of the current study is to compare delinquent and non-delinquent adolescents in Iran in terms of social interest and borderline personality component.Methodology: The method of this study is causal-comparative. The population consisted of all male adolescents aged between 13 and 18 in Mashhad, Iran. Overall, 64 participants were included in this study. More specifically, 32 male delinquents from Mashhad’s Youth Detention Center located in Shandiz and 32 non-delinquent male adolescents contacted in three large parks in Mashhad were selected using convenient sampling technique. In order to measure the variables of the study, Crandall’s Social Interest Scale (SIS) and Leichsenring’s Borderline Personality Inventory (BPI) were used. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics indices (mean, variance and standard deviation) and independent samples t-test.Findings: The findings indicated that delinquent adolescents have significantly lower levels of social interest compared to non-delinquent adolescents. Also, the components of borderline personality in delinquent adolescents were significantly higher than that of non-delinquent adolescents.Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that social interest and borderline personality may be considered as two predicting components of delinquency. In other words, low social interest and borderline personality in adolescents increases the rate of crime, felony and aggression.

Keywords:

Social interest , borderline personality , delinquent adolescents , non-delinquent adolescents