Psychopathy in the context of adversity: understanding associations between early life adversity and psychopathic symptoms in a sample of justice-involved youth

Introduction: Psychopathic symptoms have long been studied in samples of justice-involved youth. Collectively, findings suggest early life adversities (ELAs) like abuse and maltreatment are linked with increases in symptomology. Yet these studies infrequently consider the wider definitions of ELA utilized by many researchers across fields of developmental and health psychology, which also include experiences of general household dysfunction. Hypotheses: Greater ELA exposure will be associated with increases in psychopathic symptomology, both at study outset and across time. Additionally, ELA will be more strongly linked to behavioral symptoms than emotional or social symptoms. Method: The current study utilized available data from a large, longitudinal sample of justice-involved males (the Pathways to Desistance study; Mage = 16.09 years at baseline, 42.4% African American, 34.0% Hispanic American, 18.9% Non-Hispanic Caucasian, 2.2% Native American and 2.5% other race/ethnicity) to generate a new (to the dataset) measure of ELA modeled after the popular Adverse Childhood Experience questionnaire that included nine unique categories of adversity. This scale was used to predict (1) overall psychopathic symptoms and sub-scales at baseline (using an interview-based measure) and (2) trajectories of change in symptoms across the study period (using a self-report measure, covering seven years of development). Results: Results indicate that general ELA is associated with psychopathic symptoms at baseline and did not predict rates of change across time (though patterns vary by sub-dimension). Analyses comparing types of adversity (abuse and neglect vs. household dysfunction) suggest this effect is imparted by abuse and neglect, and not broader environmental dysfunction. These results were consistent after accounting for co-occurring anxiety, which is sometimes used to explore primary and secondary variants. Conclusion: These results add to existing literature linking serious adversity to psychopathic symptoms and extend findings by considering type of adversity for the first time longitudinally in a sample of justice involved youth. Findings are situated within developmental theories of psychopathy in relation to ELA, and practical implications of the findings for practitioners and policy makers are discussed.