Youth psychopathic traits and delinquent behavior among adolescents in Saudi social observation centers: the indirect role of moral disengagement and the moderating role of cognitive empathy.

INTRODUCTION: Juvenile delinquency is associated with multiple individual-level psychological domains, but youth psychopathic traits, moral disengagement, and cognitive empathy have been less directly examined within a single theory-informed structural model among justice-involved adolescents. This study tested a cross-sectional structural model linking youth psychopathic traits, moral disengagement, cognitive empathy, and delinquent behavior among adolescents residing in social observation centers in Saudi Arabia. METHODS: The sample included 171 adolescents recruited from nine social observation centers across Saudi Arabia. Youth psychopathic traits were assessed using the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory-Short Version, moral disengagement using the eight-item Propensity to Morally Disengage Scale, cognitive empathy using the cognitive empathy subscale of the Basic Empathy Scale, and delinquent behavior using a short self-report delinquency index. Data were analyzed using partial least-squares structural equation modeling with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. RESULTS: Youth psychopathic traits were positively associated with moral disengagement (β = 0.302, p < 0.001) and delinquent behavior (β = 0.217, p < 0.001). Moral disengagement was positively associated with delinquent behavior (β = 0.153, p = 0.006) and represented a small statistically detectable indirect component of the concurrent association between youth psychopathic traits and delinquent behavior (β = 0.046, p = 0.030). Cognitive empathy was negatively associated with delinquent behavior (β = -0.344, p < 0.001). The interaction between youth psychopathic traits and cognitive empathy was significant (β = -0.175, p = 0.007), indicating that the positive association between youth psychopathic traits and delinquent behavior was weaker at higher levels of cognitive empathy. The model explained 36.4% of the variance in delinquent behavior. DISCUSSION: The findings are consistent with a social-cognitive moral-regulation framing in which delinquent behavior is associated with dispositional psychopathy-related traits, moral-cognitive justification, and social-cognitive understanding. Because the data were cross-sectional, the indirect path through moral disengagement was interpreted as a statistically estimated concurrent indirect association rather than evidence of temporal mediation or a causal mechanism. The interaction involving cognitive empathy was likewise interpreted as a conditional concurrent association rather than evidence of a causal buffering effect.