Browsing by Author "Tiainen, Outi"

Study goal: The goal of this study was to examine the association between psychopathic traits in juvenile delinquents and developmental factors. In previous studies the focus has been mainly on neurobiological etiological factors predicting psychopathic traits. Based on the limited amount of developmental research it was adequate to examine the impact of the affective tone in the parental-child relationship and especially mother's hostile parenting style to psychopathic traits. Additionally it was examined if socio-emotional development linking to early states of psychological development and affection, and emotional reactivity were linking to psychopathy. Methods: The original sample consisted of North American juvenile delinquents boys aged 14-19 years (k=1354) which was part of large a Pathways to Desistance survey. In this study the sample consisted of 1123 boys. Associations between psychopathic traits and other variables were first examined through correlational study and univariate analysis of variance. Secondly stepwise multiple regression analyses were conducted and finally discrimination analysis. For the discrimination analysis the sample was divided in two based on persons scored low and high in psychopathic traits (low<25, high=>25) for testing the strength of predictive variables emerged with regression analysis to discriminate persons accurately into classes low or high in psychopathy. Results and conclusions: Results showed that mother's hostile parenting style was significantly associated with psychopathic traits. Additionally socio-emotional development was significantly associated with psychopathic traits. Findings highlight that the more hostile is the mother-child relationship the higher will psychopathic traits be. Additionally low temperance with problems in impulse control and suppression of aggression predicted prevalence of high psychopathic traits. The hypothesis based on previous studies about associations between emotional reactivity and psychopathy didn't gain any significant relevance based on present study. Neither did emotional self-regulation connect to psychopathy with this sample in this study.