Research Review: The importance of callous‐unemotional traits for developmental models of aggressive and antisocial behavior

Abstract

The current paper reviews research suggesting that the presence of a callous and unemotional interpersonal style designates an important subgroup of antisocial and aggressive youth. Specifically, callous-unemotional (CU) traits (e.g., lack of guilt, absence of empathy, callous use of others) seem to be relatively stable across childhood and adolescence and they designate a group of youth with a particularly severe, aggressive, and stable pattern of antisocial behavior. Further, antisocial youth with CU traits show a number of distinct emotional, cognitive, and personality characteristics compared to other antisocial youth. These characteristics of youth with CU traits have important implications for causal models of antisocial and aggressive behavior, for methods used to study antisocial youth, and for assessing and treating antisocial and aggressive behavior in children and adolescents.

Violence Exposure Mediates the Relation Between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Offending Patterns in Adolescents

“…In support of our hypothesis, the well-established link between CU traits and violence reported in several prior studies (e.g., Caputo, Frick, & Brodsky, 1999;Frick & Dickens, 2006;Frick & White, 2008) was fully accounted for by a history of violence exposure in our sample of ethnically diverse detained boys. Furthermore, this pattern of mediation was driven by exposure to witnessed forms of violence.…”

“…Several studies find that CU traits are moderately stable from late childhood to early adolescence (Frick, Kimonis, Dandreaux, & Farrell, 2003;Munoz & Frick, 2007), and from adolescence to adulthood (Lynam, Caspi, Moffitt, Loeber, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 2007;Lynam, Miller, Vachon, Loeber, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 2009). Compared with youth low on CU traits, antisocial youth high on CU traits present with a particularly severe and stable pattern of conduct problems and delinquent behavior (Frick, Cornell, Barry, Bodin & Dane, 2003;Frick, Stickle, Dandreaux, Farrell, & Kimonis, 2005;Loney, Taylor, Butler, & Iacono, 2007), tend to show greater substance-related delinquency (Taylor & Lang, 2006), and show higher rates of aggression, and violent and sexual offending (Caputo, Frick, & Brodsky, 1999;Frick & White, 2008). In their review of 24 published studies, Frick and Dickens (2006) found consistent support for an association between CU traits and more severe conduct problems, delinquency, violence and aggression.…”

“…In their review of 24 published studies, Frick and Dickens (2006) found consistent support for an association between CU traits and more severe conduct problems, delinquency, violence and aggression. Antisocial youth scoring high on CU traits also show different risk factors and correlates compared to youth scoring low, such as greater thrill-seeking and a reward dominant response style (Frick, Lilienfeld, Ellis, Loney, & Silverthorn, 1999), insensitivity to punishment (see Frick & White, 2008) and poor recognition of and attention to others' distress cues (Blair, 1999;Kimonis, Frick, Fazekas, & Loney, 2006), suggestive of a divergent developmental pathway to their antisocial behavior (Frick, 2009).…”

Remorse, psychopathology, and psychopathy among adolescent offenders.

“…In light of research suggesting that psychopathy involves lack of remorse, shallow affect, and failure to accept responsibility (Hare, 1991;Frick & White, 2008), we expected that guilt would be negatively related to psychopathic traits. Given other research indicating that shame is positively related to non-affective features of psychopathy (Campbell & Elison, 2005), we anticipated that shame would be positively related to the antisocial and behavioural characteristics of the disorder.…”

Interpersonal and Affective Dimensions of Psychopathic Traits in Adolescents: Development and Validation of a Self-Report Instrument

“…Much is known about psychopathy in adults and in particular those who are incarcerated [3]. Although psychopathic traits are visible in children and adolescents [4,5] and studies show a relationship between psychopathic traits and antisocial behavior in delinquent and non-delinquent youth [5], comparatively little is known about the construct in non-incarcerated populations [6].…”