The importance of (anti)social influence in serious juvenile offenders with psychopathic traits.

Abstract

Psychopathy, as it is popularly conceptualized, includes personality features (callousness, lack of remorse or shame, manipulativeness, and pathologic egocentricity) which imply impediments to the formation of traditional social bonds. However, it has been suggested that individuals with psychopathic traits may be affected by their social context, which may fuel their engagement in antisocial activity (Kerr, Van Zalk, & Stattin, 2012; Martens, 2002, 2003). As adolescents are inherently more susceptible to social influences than other developmental stages, it is especially important to understand the role of interpersonal context, particularly among youth with psychopathic traits. This study examines whether psychopathic traits moderate the relation between the antisocial influence of peers, parents, and very important nonparental adults on institutional (both self-report and official records of) offending in a sample of serious juvenile offenders in Southern California. Results indicate that greater exposure to antisocial influence from peers and very important nonparental adults translated to more delinquent behavior among all youth in the current study, but the impact of peer influence on institutional misconduct were particularly pronounced for youth high in psychopathic traits. These findings imply that taking a youth’s social environment into account is paramount when examining the importance of psychopathic traits to adolescent antisocial behavior.

Interpersonal Relationships as Protective and Risk Factors for Psychopathy: A Follow-up Study in Adolescent Offenders

“…Also in agreement with our hypothesis, partner's antisocial influence and peer delinquency increased the risk for psychopathy, suggesting that the more antisocial activities the adolescent experiences in his/her interpersonal relationships, the higher he/she scores on psychopathic measures. These results support previous studies regarding peers (Lynam et al 2008;Muñoz et al 2008;Tatar et al 2016) and romantic partners (Eklund et al 2010;Haynie et al 2005;Monahan et al 2014;Simons et al 2002). Although we investigated romantic and peer relationships separately, we also controlled for peer delinquency in the analyses measuring romantic relationships because it is said that other prosocial people may contribute to the association of romantic relationships (Haynie et al 2005;Wright and Cullen 2004;Zedaker and Bouffards 2017).…”

“…There is a positive correlation between deviant peers and psychopathic characteristics (Lynam et al 2008;Muñoz et al 2008;Tatar et al 2016), and the causality appears to be bidirectional (Kerr et al 2012;Kimonis et al 2004;Van Zalk and Van Zalk 2015). Psychopathic individuals are more likely to offend with peers than alone (Muñoz et al 2008;Thornton et al 2015) and to experience lower peer support (Fanti 2013;Fanti et al 2017) and problems in their friendships in general (Kokkinos et al 2016;Muñoz et al 2008).…”

Susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence in adolescence

“…Our findings also support previous studies which have shown that susceptibility to antisocial influence decreases with age across adolescence. The majority of previous studies have focussed on direct forms of antisocial behaviour, for example, greater exposure to antisocial peers increases adolescent offending behaviours ( Tatar, Cavanagh, & Cauffman, 2016 ) and bullying ( Doehne et al, 2018 ), with few studies investigating indirect antisocial behaviour such as ostracising others ( Sijtsema et al, 2014 ). Even though the social influence effects in the present study pertain specifically to changes in hypothetical antisocial actions, and not actual behaviours, our findings support these previous findings by showing that antisocial influence decreases with age.…”

Weak parental supervision and lack of child remorse as predictors of proximal crime continuity in early-to-mid adolescent delinquents

“…One of the principal features, corollaries or consequences of weak moral values is a general lack of remorse. Research, in fact, has shown that lack of remorse, in conjunction with other features of childhood psychopathy, is strongly linked to antisocial behavior in children and adolescents (Mann et al , 2015; Roşan and Costea-Bărluţiu, 2013; Tatar et al , 2016; Wootton et al , 1997). It is assumed, then, that weak moral values encourage crime persistence by making it difficult for the child to experience guilt and thus learn from their mistakes, just as poor parenting encourages crime persistence by failing to curb the child’s destructive impulses.…”