Recent studies based on the psychobiological theory of personality by Cloninger postulate a relationship between certain personality traits and various psychopathological manifestations. To test the theory, this study administered the Temperament and Character Inventory and the Youth Self-Report to 188 male delinquents from a juvenile correctional center in Northern Russia and to 111 age-matched male controls recruited from among schoolchildren. Psychological symptoms were primarily positively correlated with harm avoidance and negatively correlated with self-directedness. The higher levels of aggressive and delinquent behavior were positively correlated with novelty seeking and negatively correlated with co-operativeness. The article concludes that, because of this study's small effect size, it is not legitimate to state that personality traits play a causal role in the development of psychopathology. It suggests longitudinal studies within a multifactorial interactive framework of biological, cultural, and psychological variables. Tables, references