Self-control in Global Perspective: an Empirical Assessment of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory within and across 32 National Settings*

Research concerning Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) General Theory of Crime has paid inadequate attention to the reliability and validity of self-control measures in non-Western settings, to the relationship between parenting and self-control in non-Western settings, and to Gottfredson and Hirschi’s assertion that macro-level cultural forces have little or no influence on criminal behavior. The present study addresses each of these issues using a six-item self-control scale and two separate crime measures among young adult respondents from 32 Western and non-Western settings on all six humanly habitable continents. Across Western and non-Western settings, results suggest that (1) the six-item self-control scale demonstrates reliability comparable to that of prior self-control scales in the existing criminological literature; (2) the scale is associated significantly with both violence and property crime, and (3) an eight-item parental neglect scale is associated with self-control in both Western and nonWestern settings. At the same time, HLM (Hierarchical Linear and Nonlinear Modeling) analysis suggests that there exists a macro-level contextual effect, unanticipated by Gottfredson and Hirschi, of aggregate parental neglect on individual-level self-control. Results further suggest a robust individual-level association, also unanticipated by Gottfredson and Hirschi, between personal and peer crime that tends to remain independent of adjustments for self-control.