Poster #50 - Longitudinal Associations among Psychopathic Traits, Anxiety, and Borderline Personality Disorder Features across Adolescence

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Despite the long-standing calls to identify developmental pathways to psychopathy (Karpman, 1950; McCord & McCord, 1964), a recent comprehensive and systematic review of callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., lack of empathy or guilt and callous use of others) in children and adolescents highlighted a notable absence of longitudinal studies examining cognitive, emotional, and personality characteristics associated with CU traits (Frick et al., 2013). Longitudinal studies examining the association between CU traits and the severity and stability of antisocial behaviour were better represented; however, most of these studies involved clinical or forensic samples and most included boys only (Frick et al., 2013). Given these limitations, there remains a need to better understand the developmental precursors and pathways of psychopathy in non-clinical/forensic populations that include boys and girls. In the present study, we examined the developmental pathways between primary and secondary psychopathic traits, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder (BPD) features in a sample of 572 adolescents (253 girls; aged 13-14 years in Grade 8) who were assessed annually on five occasions (Grades 8-12). Primary psychopathy is characterized by interpersonal and affective traits such as cold affect and interpersonal manipulation that are marked by an absence of fear and low empathy (i.e., CU traits); whereas secondary psychopathic traits are characterized by a chronically unstable and socially deviant lifestyle that is marked by impulsivity, negative emotionality, aggression, and irresponsibility. We used a cascade modelling approach that provided stringent tests of cross-sectional and longitudinal associations within and between constructs, while also controlling for sex, household income, and parental education. The model had excellent fit to the data (χ2(97)=149.702, p<.001; CFI=.990; TLI=.978; RMSEA=.031 (90% CI=[.021,.040]), p=1.00; SRMR=.028; AIC=23,224.543). See Figure 1 for significant within-time correlations and across-time paths. Results indicated that primary and secondary psychopathic traits were equally highly stable across adolescence. As expected, we found that secondary psychopathic traits were concurrently positively associated with anxiety and BPD features at each time point, whereas primary psychopathic traits only held one concurrent association with BPD features. Although BPD features were found to be an antecedent of primary psychopathic traits, anxiety was found to have inverse reciprocal associations with primary psychopathic traits across time. Our model also yielded reciprocal longitudinal paths between BPD features, secondary psychopathic traits, and anxiety. Over the five year model, we replicated a four-lag indirect pathway from BPD features to secondary psychopathic traits to BPD features to anxiety. These findings suggest that the development of psychopathic traits is embedded within the development of emotional characteristics and personality features, which highlights areas for intervention in early adolescence. Specifically, clinicians should be aware that low anxiety, characteristically viewed as positive, may be a marker of future elevated primary psychopathic traits in typically developing adolescents. Moreover, given the strong link between secondary psychopathic traits and the development of BPD features, modifying their common central trait of impulsivity might prove useful.

Authors

• Tracy Vaillancourt, University of Ottawa
  Presenting Author

• Heather Brittain, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author