(PS3-48) A Network Analysis of Adolescent Psychopathic Traits

Psychopathy is a personality dimension that includes a lack of empathy, poor self-regulation, and interpersonal deficits (Hare, 1996) and is predictive of antisocial behavior (DeLisi, 2009). However, it can also be developmentally normative for adolescents (Edens et al., 2001). Therefore, it is important to understand how psychopathy manifests in adolescents and whether these traits predict psychopathy or antisocial behavior in adulthood. Network analysis is a promising approach for understanding the interrelations between personality traits and has been applied to adult psychopathy (Tsang & Salekin, 2019). We therefore applied network analysis to three self-report measures of psychopathy for adolescents.

The sample consisted of 970 participants aged 16-19 recruited from a 22-week quasi-military residential program. Participants completed the Antisocial Personality Screening Device (APSD; Frick & Hare, 2001), Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU; Frick, 2003), and the Antisocial Behavior and Dyscontrol subscales of the Youth Personality Inventory (YPI; Lachar & Gruber, 1995). Network analyses were run using bootnet and qgraph in R, and centrality indices (i.e., closeness, betweenness, strength, expected influence) were calculated to determine which nodes were most central to each network. A domain-level network was also estimated using all subscales to explore the broad network of psychopathic features in adolescents.

Analysis of the APSD indicated that the Narcissism and Impulsivity subscales are most closely interconnected and that two Narcissism items were most central across the network. Analysis of the ICU revealed two disconnected networks with all Uncaring items clustered together, all Callousness items except one (“I am concerned about the feelings of others”) clustered together, and Unemotional items split evenly across the two clusters. Two Uncaring items were most central across both networks. The PIY network showed strong differentiation between the two subscales with a Dyscontrol item being most central to the network. Finally, the domain-level network demonstrated interconnectedness across all subscales, with Callousness from the ICU and Dyscontrol from the PIY as most central. Although these scales potentially tap into different domains of psychopathy, each measure-specific network’s central item described this interpersonal intersection of callousness and dyscontrol (APSD: “I apologize to persons I hurt;” ICU: “You get angry when corrected or punished;” PIY: “I have attacked other people”). Thus, a core aspect of psychopathy in adolescence may be impulsivity coupled with disregard for others. Future work could determine whether this conceptualization is most predictive of psychopathic traits that persist into adulthood.