Entangled Pathways to Delinquency: An Integrative Conceptual Framework of Personality, Situations, and Macrostructures

Abstract: Personality traits have long been linked to delinquency, yet the processes through which dispositional tendencies translate into behavior across contexts remain insufficiently integrated. The present paper offers an integrative conceptual framework that synthesizes perspectives from psychology, criminology, and socioecological approaches to conceptualize delinquency as emerging from recursive person–situation transactions embedded within macrostructural environments. At the micro-level, the framework specifies moderation, whereby personality shapes responsiveness to situations, and mediation, whereby transient proximal psychological states translate both traits and situations into behavior. Within this architecture, short-term mindsets represent a proximal psychological state through which situational triggers and dispositional tendencies shift attention toward immediate versus future outcomes. The framework further highlights recursive feedback dynamics through which state activation and behavioral outcomes may shape subsequent situation selection, while macrostructural environments recalibrate situational exposure and in-situ expectations. Overall, the framework offers a psychologically grounded, process-oriented account of how delinquency may emerge across contexts.