Callous-Unemotional Traits Mediate the Association Between Violence Exposure and Aggressive Offending

• In Event: The Importance of Environmental Influences for Youth with Juvenile Psychopathy

Abstract

Although callous-unemotional (CU) traits often are theorized as highly heritable, stable, and relatively insensitive to environmental influence, recent research has highlighted the importance of understanding environmental risk factors for CU traits. However, much of this work has focused on negative parenting characteristics; only a few studies have examined exposure to violence as a possible risk factor for CU traits. In the current study, we use six years of secondary data from a longitudinal study (Pathways to Desistance) of 1,354 adolescent and young adult offenders (14% female) to test our hypothesis that CU traits would mediate the association between exposure to violence and aggressive offending. We found partial support for this hypothesis, and found that exposure to violence led to increased CU traits, which in turn were associated with greater risk for aggressive offending. These findings provide an important addition to the literature on risk factors for callous-unemotional traits. Implications for prevention and treatment of adolescent offending will be discussed.

Authors

• Meagan Docherty, Rutgers University

• Paul Boxer, Rutgers University