Abstract
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits observed during childhood and adolescence are thought to be precursors of psychopathic traits in adulthood. Adults with high levels of psychopathic traits typically present antisocial behavior. Such behavior can be indicative of atypical moral processing. Evidence suggests that moral dysfunction in these individuals may stem from a disruption of affective components of moral processing rather than from an inability to compute moral judgments per se. No study to date has tested if the dissociation between affective and cognitive dimensions of moral processing linked to psychopathic traits in adulthood is also linked to CU traits during development. Here, 47 typically developing adolescents with varying levels of CU traits completed a novel, animated cartoon task depicting everyday moral transgressions and indicated how they would feel in such situations and how morally wrong the situations were. Adolescents with higher CU traits reported reduced anticipated guilt and wrongness appraisals of the transgressions. However, our key finding was a significant interaction between CU traits and anticipated guilt in predicting wrongness judgments. The strength of the association between anticipated guilt and wrongness judgement was significantly weaker for those with higher levels of CU traits. This evidence extends our knowledge on the cognitive-affective processing deficits that may underlie moral dysfunction in youth who are at heightened risk for antisocial behavior and psychopathy in adulthood. Future longitudinal research is required to elucidate whether there is an increased dissociation between different components of moral processing from adolescence to adulthood for those with high psychopathic traits.
Highlights
The term callous-unemotional (CU) refers to a constellation of personality traits that include blunted affect, lack of empathy and remorse, uncaring behavior and disregard for others’ feelings and well-being [1,2,3,4]
The presence of high levels of CU traits, a constellation of personality traits marked by blunted affect, uncaring behavior and disregard for others [e.g., [3]], in youth is associated with increased antisocial behavior, even in the absence of a diagnosis of conduct disorder [5, 12]
A growing body of research in adult samples suggests that moral dysfunction in psychopathy may stem from a disruption of the affective components of moral processing rather than from an inability to compute moral judgments per se
Summary
The term callous-unemotional (CU) refers to a constellation of personality traits that include blunted affect, lack of empathy and remorse, uncaring behavior and disregard for others’ feelings and well-being [1,2,3,4]. High levels of CU traits are thought to contribute to the development of a more persistent and aggressive type of antisocial behavior in youth, found across forensic [e.g., [8, 9], community [e.g., [1, 5]], and mental health samples [e.g., [10]]. Even in the absence of conduct disorder, high levels of CU traits have been associated with higher risk for disruptive behavior [e.g., [5, 11, 12]]. Longitudinal data indicate that CU traits add to the prediction of serious and persistent criminal behavior in boys, over and above the presence of conduct disorder symptoms and oppositional defiant problems [13]
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