Anxiety as a differentiating variable in emotional recognition in juvenile offenders with high callous‐unemotional traits

Abstract

Background: The presence of so-called callous-unemotional (CU) traits-lack of remorse/empathy, callous use of others and shallow/deficient affect-defines an important subgroup of children and adolescents with more severe and stable antisocial behaviours over time and may be a precursor to so-called psychopathy in adults. There are two main hypotheses to account for such traits, one emphasising deficits in recognition of specific emotions-the distress specific-and the other in aspects of facial recognition-the attention to the eyes hypothesis, but it may be that the manifestation of deficits is affected by the person's own emotional state.Aims: To test the effect of anxiety scores on emotion recognition among young people high scoring for CU traits.Methods: 14to 21-year-olds serving sentences in youth justice institutions across Spain were invited to participate.Only those scoring above the cut-off on the Kimonis Inventory of Callous and Unemotional Traits were included. Anxiety was measured using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.

The relation between psychopathy factors and emotional states prior and during criminal behaviour in a Dutch sample

“…The affective features of psychopathy, according to the PCL-R, were a significant negative predictor for feelings of vulnerability in the events prior to the crime. Other studies show that shallow affect, lack of remorse, callousness and lack of empathy do not associate with self-conscious emotions, such as anxiety, shame or feeling vulnerable (Halty and Caperos, 2023; Kahn et al , 2017; Lanciano and Curci, 2021) although offenders may not have deficits in positive emotions (e.g. pleasure) given their reward-driven behaviour (Melo et al , 2023; Pujara et al , 2014).…”