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Grandiose-Manipulative, Callous-Unemotional, and Daring-Impulsive: the Prediction of Psychopathic Traits in Adolescence and their Outcomes in Adulthood

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Abstract

There has been much debate about how to measure psychopathic traits in adolescence. One of the main issues is whether one should focus on callous-unemotional (CU) traits alone, or CU traits in combination with Grandiose-Manipulative (GM) and Daring-Impulsive (DI) traits. The current study first investigates the extent to which youth who are high on CU traits are also high on GM and DI traits. In addition, the study investigates if being high on both CU and GM, and high on both CU and DI, identify groups that are particularly characterized by past and future impairments. To investigate this, data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) was analyzed. The CSDD is a prospective longitudinal study of 411 English boys spanning over 50 years. The information available at age 12–14 was coded on the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD). Childhood risk factors were measured at age 8–10 and later life outcomes were measured at age 32. The results indicate that being high on CU in combination with DI delineates a clinically interesting group who are characterized by high childhood risk and poorer adult life outcomes. The same applied to the high CU/high GM group, but to a lesser extent.

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Funding

The CSDD has been funded mainly by the UK Home Office and the UK Department of Health, UK National Programme on Forensic Mental Health. No conflict of interest reported.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Sciences, University of Derby, 1 Friar Gate Square, 4-6 Agard Street, Derby, DE1 1DZ, UK

    Henriette Bergstrøm

  2. Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    David P. Farrington

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  1. Henriette Bergstrøm
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Correspondence to Henriette Bergstrøm.

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Ethical Approval

Ethical approval for the interviews was granted by the Institute of Psychiatry, London University ethics committee. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of Interest

Authors Henriette Bergstrøm and David P. Farrington declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Bergstrøm, H., Farrington, D.P. Grandiose-Manipulative, Callous-Unemotional, and Daring-Impulsive: the Prediction of Psychopathic Traits in Adolescence and their Outcomes in Adulthood. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 40, 149–158 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-018-9674-6

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