The hypothesis that traits associated with effortful control can moderate other risk factors has gained empirical support. Wills et al. (2001b) investigated a temperament construct related to effortful control, known as task attentional orientation, and found that together with higher levels of positive emotionality, youth higher in this protective temperament trait demonstrated a weaker association between the risk factors of peer and parental substance use and the adolescents’ own substance use. No direct effect between protective temperament dimensions and substance use was reported in their model. Looking at antisocial behavior, Gardner et al. (2008) examined a multireporter construct of effortful control for adolescents and found both direct negative effects on growth in antisocial behavior and a moderation of the impact of association with deviant peers. This finding replicated similar findings linking poor self-regulation to the development of antisocial behavior in adolescence (Goodnight et al. 2007). Dishion and Connell (2007) promoted the conceptualization that adolescent self-regulation functions as a resilience factor in adolescent development. That is, adolescents with greater levels of self-regulation are better able to resist joining in their peers’ problem behavior.
