A new study published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry finds that mothers’ psychopathic traits can prospectively predict their teenagers’ callous-unemotional traits a year on, with the link strongest for the affective dimension of psychopathy. The research tracked 99 teenagers diagnosed with conduct disorder and their mothers in Virginia, amounting to 198 participants overall.
Conduct disorder describes a pattern of rule-breaking and harming the rights of others, including behaviours such as fighting, stealing or lying. Within this group, researchers emphasise callous-unemotional traits, characterised by a lack of empathy, little guilt after wrongdoing and shallow emotional expression, which are linked to more persistent problems and a higher risk of developing psychopathy later in life.
Psychopathy is understood as a multi-faceted personality pattern, commonly divided into interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and antisocial components. The affective facet—featuring shallow emotions and reduced empathy—mirrors the key features of callous-unemotional traits in children, the study notes.
Past research has suggested associations between parental psychopathic traits and youths’ callous-unemotional traits, but many studies relied on younger children or used a single overall score. Thomson and James from Virginia Commonwealth University sought to determine whether mothers’ psychopathic traits predicted teens’ callous-unemotional traits a year later, after accounting for where the teens started and whether any particular facet stood out.
The researchers recruited 99 teenagers aged 13 to 17 (average about 15½) who had already been diagnosed with conduct disorder, along with their mothers. The sample was predominantly male (about 68 per cent), with 60 per cent identifying as Black or African American, 36 per cent as white, and 4 per cent American Indian or Alaska Native. Three fathers participated but were excluded from the analysis due to small numbers. The data came from a larger National Institute of Mental Health–funded project examining fear responses and the development of callous-unemotional traits.
At the outset and again 12 months later, the teens completed a 24-item questionnaire measuring callous-unemotional traits. Mothers completed a 28-item measure of psychopathic traits, with seven items for each facet: interpersonal, affective, lifestyle and antisocial.
The team used statistical models that accounted for the teens’ initial callous-unemotional scores, as well as age, sex and race, and their mothers’ age. This approach assessed whether mothers’ traits add predictive value beyond the baseline information.
Findings showed that callous-unemotional traits were moderately stable over the year; higher initial scores tended to predict higher scores at follow-up, though there was room for change. Demographic factors and the teens’ starting scores explained about 21 per cent of the variation in follow-up scores, and adding mothers’ overall psychopathy increased the explained variation to around 26 per cent.
When psychopathy was analysed by its four facets, the model explained roughly 31 per cent of the variation in follow-up callous-unemotional traits. Crucially, only the affective facet showed a significant association with teens’ later callous-unemotional traits when all four facets were considered together; the interpersonal, lifestyle and antisocial facets did not reach statistical significance.
In practical terms, the study estimates that a mother scoring about four points higher on the affective items—a typical spread within the sample—was associated with nearly a four-point higher teen score at follow-up, against an average follow-up teen score of around 30.
The researchers also explored whether the pattern differed by sex. Adding sex comparisons did not meaningfully improve predictions overall, but a specific finding emerged: the link between mothers’ affective traits and teens’ later callous-unemotional traits appeared among girls but not among boys. With girls comprising roughly one third of the sample, the result warrants confirmation in larger studies.
The study aligns with earlier PsyPost reporting from 2022 that parents with greater psychopathic traits tended to have adolescents with more callous-unemotional traits, partly through harsher and less warm parenting. The newer study, however, followed adolescents already diagnosed with conduct disorder over a year rather than relying on a community twin sample, which strengthens the focus on this clinical group.
Thomson and James suggest that the emotional dimension of a mother’s personality—rather than her tendency to manipulate, be impulsive or break rules—may be most relevant to whether callous traits persist or intensify during adolescence. They note that empathy-building skills reportedly drawn on by parents in development theories may be implicated, though the study did not measure parenting directly.
The authors caution that the observed link is associative, not causal, and the majority of participating mothers were biological. Genetic factors, maternal behaviour, or a combination of both could explain the association, and the study design cannot separate these possibilities.
Other limitations include the relatively small, single-system sample and the reliance on self-reported measures from both mothers and teens. The researchers also did not assess childhood maltreatment, which may contribute to callous-unemotional traits. They call for future studies incorporating genetic data, direct observations of parent–teen interactions and including fathers to clarify how caregiver personality and caregiving together shape these traits over time.
The study, “Maternal psychopathic traits prospectively predict youth callous-unemotional traits,” is by Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James of Virginia Commonwealth University.
