Background and purpose: the adolescents’ criminality is considered a type of social incompatibility which causes serious crises in the society; therefore, identifying the causes bringing about the emergence of this phenomenon is vital. Hence, the present study was conducted to compare four personality types (A, B, C and D) in criminal and normal adolescents.
Method: the research method was causal-comparative. The statistical population of the present study included criminal adolescents (9 to 18 years old) at juvenile detention center in the town of Lordegan in 2020. The samples included 60 criminal adolescents and 60 non-criminal adolescents homogenous in gender and age who were selected through convenient sampling method (total number of 20 adolescents). The investigation tool included A and B personality types test (Freeman and Rozetman, 1959), C personality type scale (Hoshaka et.al. 1999) and D personality type scale (Denolt, 2005) which have been completed personally by two group members and reliability and validity of the above-mentioned tools have been proved in different studies.
Findings: investigating the research hypotheses showed that there is a significant difference between C and D personality types in criminal and normal adolescents (P<0.05) in a way that C personality type is more prominent in non-criminal groups and so is D personality type in criminal group, while there is no significant difference between A and B personality types in criminal and normal adolescents.
Conclusion: the results show that C personality type and D personality type can act as a screening device in crime-prone adolescents.