Mediating Role of Religious Orientation and Moral Character for the Relationship Between Parent and Peer Attachment and Delinquency

The present study proposes and examines a path model to explain delinquency by addressing role of parents and peers attachment in determination of religious orientation leading to moral character. The objective was to develop an understating of the underlying mechanism of protective factors including interpersonal relations, and religious orientation in shaping morality against an undesired social behavior. Adolescents (N=706) with mean age of 17.01 (sd = 0.98) reported their attachment to parents and peers, religious orientation, moral character, and delinquency on self-report measures. Results showed that both parent and peer attachment had direct negative effect on delinquency. Extrinsic religious orientation had significant positive and moral character had significant negative effect on delinquency. Although extrinsic religious orientation mediated the relationship between both parent and peer attachment and delinquency, but the mediating effect of extrinsic religious orientation between peer attachment and delinquency was stronger than parent attachment and delinquency. Concluding the present research, secure parent attachment is more related to intrinsic religious orientation than extrinsic religious orientation which leads to strong moral character resulting decrease in delinquency. For peer attachment both dimensions of religious orientation are playing an equal role to strengthen moral character resulting a decrease in delinquency