Social support does not moderate the relationship between personality and risk-taking/antisocial behaviour

Perceived social support from family, friends, and significant others is as a key influence on positive behaviour, so potentially reduces risk-taking and offending. Research on these constructs was examined in relation to the influence of personality. We recruited 429 general population participants who completed self-reports of personality, the Dark Triad (DT), risk-taking, offence history, and social support, testing whether social support moderated the expected associations between personality, risk, and offending. As expected, risk-taking and offence history were correlated with, and predicted by, personality, namely, higher psychopathy and Machiavellianism, and lower emotionality and Honesty-Humility. Of the three social support constructs friends, significant others, and family, only family had any significant association with offending. While perceived level of social support from family was weakly associated with lower offence history, this effect fell out when personality was entered into the model, and overall social support did not moderate offence history or risk-taking. Social support (SS) may idiosyncratically influence lives via stress buffering or relational regulation, but these data suggest SS does not have a priori systematic effects on troublesome outcomes like risk-taking and offending.