Military experience helps setting reasonable personality characteristics but does not alter the criminal behavior-related impression of negative parental experience and alcoholism in a Chinese population

• Incarcerated veterans showed a stronger predilection toward alcohol abuse.
• Incarcerated veterans experienced negative parental attitudes in childhood.
• Incarcerated veterans had decreased emotional stability.
• Military service showed behavioral benefits in the incarcerated veteran population.

Personalities are determined by convergent factors, including physical environment, culture, special experience, and heredity. It has been shown that abuse of substance and alcohol among individuals with personality disorders predict criminality (Glenn and Raine, 2014; Hernandez-Avila et al., 2000). Thus, it is important to clarify the relationship between psychological characteristics and valence of criminal practice, even in the population without substance abuse. Here, we focused on a population with military experience in Shaanxi province of China to screen the psychological characteristics and correlate these characteristics to criminal behaviors. The study population included incarcerated veterans, incarcerated civilians, and three groups of military troops with different lengths of active duty history (<1 month, 1 year, and 2 years). We used the MAST (Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test), EMBU (Egna Minnen av Barndoms Uppfostran), and 16PF (Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire) for the screening purpose. Eight hundred seventy-five valid packets of questionnaires were collected during November 2014–January 2015. Comparison of the mean scores was used to evaluate the difference among the five groups. Incarcerated veterans and incarcerated civilians shared the alcohol abuse-relevant characteristics, including negative parental attitudes during their childhood and decreased emotional stability. Compared to the incarcerated civilians, incarcerated veterans scored higher in emotional stability, self-reliance, and perfectionism, but a lower score in apprehension. Personality characteristics associated with criminal behavior of incarcerated veterans seem to be unrelated to their military service per se as evidenced by the control groups. Conversely, military service may benefit the personnel characteristics even in the incarcerated veteran population.