Affective Differences Between Psychopathy Variants and Genders in Adjudicated Youth

Abstract

The present study used Model-Based Cluster analysis to identify primary and secondary psychopathy variants in a mixed-gender sample of 150 adjudicated adolescents (60 % male; M = 15.2 years old). Distinct primary and secondary psychopathy groups emerged and were entered into a structural equation path model for the purpose of predicting group differences in emotional experiences reported between youth assigned to each variant. Youth characterized by secondary psychopathy reported experiencing significantly more frequent and more intense negative affect than their primary psychopathy counterparts. Frequency and intensity of affect also mediated the association between psychopathy variants and symptoms of depression, in which the secondary psychopathy group endorsed significantly more symptoms of major depression than the primary psychopathy group. Overall, these results suggest that different causal processes and affective experiences may underlie distinct trajectories to primary and secondary psychopathy variants in adjudicated adolescents. As such, youths comprising the secondary subtype of psychopathy may be more aptly considered "callous and emotional," compared with the primary subtype who present as prototypically callous and unemotional.

A latent profile analysis of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory in a representative sample of referred boys.

“…Accordingly, this variant reported the lowest levels of victimization and low levels of internalizing symptoms, in line with a profile of relatively good psychological adjustment, at least as compared to the average youth detained in juvenile institutions (here, the Moderate Psychopathy group; see also Gill & Stickle, 2016;Hicks et al, 2004;Kimonis et al, 2011).…”

“…APSD = Antisocial Process Screening Device. CU = Callous Unemotional a Colins et al, 2016Colins et al, , 2017Driessen et al, 2018;Hare et al, 2018;Ribeiro da Silva et al, 2019;Wareham et al, 2009b Colins et al, 2016Driessen et al, 2018;Hicks et al, 2006;Kimonis et al, 2011Kimonis et al, , 2012Mokros et al, 2015;Tatar et al, 2012;Vaughn et al, 2009;Wareham et al, 2009c Colins et al, 2016, 2017Ribeiro da Silva et al, 2019;Wareham et al, 2009d Colins et al, 2016Driessen et al, 2018;Gill & Stickle, 2016;Hicks et al, 2006;Kimonis et al, 2011Kimonis et al, , 2012Mokros et al, 2015;Tatar et al, 2012;Vaughn et al, 2009;Wareham et al, 2009e Colins et al, 2016, 2017Driessen et al, 2018;Hare et al, 2018;Ribeiro da Silva et al, 2019;…”

Characterising youth with callous–unemotional traits and concurrent anxiety: evidence for a high-risk clinical group

“…[15, 19, 22]), whereby elevated rates of developmental adversity and psychiatric symptomatology result in increased power to detect effects (i.e. as opposed to general population samples).…”

“…they can be thought of as ‘behavioural phenocopies’), but the CU + Anx variant is associated with more severe pre- [7, 13] and post-natal [14, 15] adversity, with the most consistent evidence relating to childhood maltreatment [16–20]. Furthermore, variants have been shown to differ markedly in presentation across a range of domains, including comorbid psychiatric symptomatology [7, 14, 15, 21, 22], impulsivity [19], self-control [23], empathy [24], personality traits [25], expression of aggression [26], negative affect [20], emotional lability [27], emotional processing [6, 17, 28, 29], behavioural risk [15, 18] and biological function [13, 26, 30]. …”

Variants of Psychopathy and the Dependence on Gender, Age, and Ethnic Background

“…Subgroups of individuals scoring high on psychopathy have been found in youth offender samples (Kimonis, Frick, Cauffman, Goldweber, & Skeem, 2012;Lee, Salekin, & Iselin, 2010;Vaughn, Edens, Howard, & Smith, 2009), and adult and youth community samples (e.g., Coid, Freestone, & Ullrich, 2012;Colins, Fanti, Salekin, & Andershed, 2016;Drislane et al 2014;Docherty, Boxer, Huesmann, O'Brien, & Bushman, 2016;Fanti, Demetriou, & Kimonis, 2013;Falkenbach, Reinhard, & Arson, 2017;Vincent, Vitacco, Grisso, & Corrado, 2003). Compared to primary psychopathy, secondary psychopathy during adolescence has been found to be associated with emotional instability, withdrawal (Skeem et al, 2007), negative affect (Gill & Stickle, 2016), lower levels of selfesteem (Fanti et al, 2013), reactive aggression, greater histories of childhood maltreatment (Kimonis, Skeem, Cauffman, & Dmitrieva, 2011), delinquency (Vaughn et al, 2009), depression (Kimonis et al, 2012), and internalizing psychopathology (Poythress et al, 2010).…”