Mothers’ Emotional Coldness May Predict Increasing Callousness in Teens, Study Finds

Teens with conduct disorder were more likely to develop higher levels of callousness and low empathy over a year when their mothers reported stronger emotional traits of psychopathy. The association remained even after researchers accounted for how callous the adolescents were at the beginning of the study.

The study, titled Maternal Psychopathic Traits Prospectively Predict Youth Callous-Unemotional Traits, was published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The findings highlight maternal emotional coldness as a potential family risk marker, although the authors stress that they cannot determine whether genetics, parenting behavior or a combination of both explains the association.

Callous-unemotional traits in youth

Conduct disorder involves a persistent pattern of aggression, rule-breaking and violating the rights of others, including behaviors such as fighting, stealing, lying or vandalism. Some young people with the disorder also show callous-unemotional traits, characterized by low guilt, reduced empathy and shallow emotional expression.

These traits are associated with more severe and persistent antisocial behavior and a greater risk of adult psychopathy. Youth with high callous-unemotional traits often use planned aggression to achieve goals and respond less strongly to punishment, which can make treatment more challenging.

Diagnostic manuals allow clinicians to add the specifier “with limited prosocial emotions” to a conduct disorder diagnosis. Research suggests that roughly one in five youths with conduct disorder meet the criteria for this specifier, highlighting the importance of identifying potential risk factors early.

Genetic and parenting influences

Previous research suggests that callous-unemotional traits are moderately to highly heritable, indicating a substantial genetic component. A 2016 adoption study involving 561 families found that biological mothers’ severe antisocial histories predicted toddlers’ callous-unemotional behavior even though the children were raised by adoptive parents.

At the same time, parenting style may make a difference. In that adoption study, adoptive mothers who frequently used praise and rewards appeared to reduce the likelihood of callous-unemotional traits in their children, suggesting a potential protective effect of warm, positive parenting.

A 2018 study of identical twins provided further support for environmental influences. Within twin pairs, the child who experienced harsher parenting tended to show more callous-unemotional traits and aggression despite the twins sharing identical genes, pointing to the potential influence of the home environment.

Focusing on maternal psychopathic traits

The new research focused on psychopathy in caregivers, a personality pattern commonly divided into four facets. The interpersonal facet involves manipulation and deceit, the affective facet includes shallow emotions and lack of empathy, the lifestyle facet reflects impulsivity, and the antisocial facet involves rule-breaking.

The affective facet closely resembles the emotional coldness and lack of remorse observed in callous-unemotional traits among youth. Previous studies had linked parental psychopathic traits with children’s callousness but often relied on a single overall score and did not fully account for the child’s initial level of these traits.

Study authors Nicholas D. Thomson and Jessica J. James of Virginia Commonwealth University examined whether mothers’ psychopathic traits predicted adolescents’ callous-unemotional traits one year later. They also investigated which of the four facets was most predictive, expecting the affective dimension to stand out.

How the study was conducted

The researchers recruited 99 adolescents with conduct disorder and their mothers from a large healthcare system in Virginia, resulting in 198 participants. The adolescents were between 13 and 17 years old, with an average age of approximately 15 and a half, and around 68 percent were boys.

About 60 percent of the teens identified as Black or African American, 36 percent as white and 4 percent as American Indian or Alaska Native. Most accompanying caregivers were biological mothers between 29 and 68 years old. Three fathers participated but were excluded from the analyses because of the small number.

The data came from a broader National Institute of Mental Health-funded project examining fear responses and callous-unemotional development. At baseline and again 12 months later, adolescents completed a 24-item measure of callous-unemotional traits, while mothers completed a 28-item questionnaire assessing their own psychopathic traits.

Key findings on emotional traits

The researchers used models that controlled for adolescents’ baseline callous-unemotional scores, along with adolescent age, sex and race and maternal age. This allowed them to examine whether maternal traits predicted changes beyond the adolescents’ starting levels.

Callous-unemotional traits showed moderate stability across the year, meaning that higher initial scores generally predicted higher scores at follow-up, although there was still room for change. Boys tended to score somewhat higher than girls at the 12-month assessment.

Demographic factors and baseline callous-unemotional scores explained about 21 percent of the variation in adolescents’ traits one year later. Adding mothers’ overall psychopathy scores increased this figure to approximately 26 percent, linking higher maternal psychopathy with higher subsequent callousness among teens.

When psychopathy was divided into its four facets, the model accounted for roughly 31 percent of the variance. Crucially, only the affective facet was associated with adolescents’ later callous-unemotional traits when all four dimensions were considered simultaneously.

The interpersonal, lifestyle and antisocial facets did not significantly predict adolescent outcomes in the combined model. This suggests that the emotional core of psychopathy, rather than impulsivity, manipulation or rule-breaking, may be particularly relevant to the progression of callous traits in teens.

For context, a four-point increase in a mother’s affective psychopathy score, approximately the typical spread within the sample, was associated with a nearly four-point higher callous-unemotional score in her adolescent one year later. The average follow-up score among the teens was about 30.

Possible sex differences and mechanisms

The researchers also investigated whether the pattern differed between boys and girls. Overall, adding sex-specific comparisons did not substantially improve predictions, meaning these findings should be interpreted cautiously.

However, one exploratory finding suggested that maternal affective traits were more clearly associated with later callous-unemotional traits among girls than boys. Because girls represented only about one third of the sample, larger studies will be needed to determine whether this potential sex-specific pathway is reliable.

Thomson and James note that people high in affective psychopathic traits tend to show low empathy, limited perspective-taking and difficulty recognizing and describing emotions. Developmental theories propose that these abilities are important to how parents foster empathy and conscience in their children.

The findings align with earlier research suggesting that parents with more psychopathic traits often display harsher and less warm parenting, which is in turn associated with higher adolescent callous-unemotional traits. However, the new study did not directly measure parenting practices, leaving the precise pathways unclear.

Clinical implications and limitations

The authors suggest that assessing caregivers’ emotional traits could help clinicians better evaluate risk in families where an adolescent already has conduct disorder. Treatments involving parents or caregivers typically outperform youth-only approaches for disruptive behavior problems.

However, the study was observational and cannot establish cause and effect. Because most mothers were biological parents, the observed associations could reflect shared genetic risk, environmental influences within the home or a combination of both.

The mothers were not clinically diagnosed with psychopathy but were instead assessed along a spectrum of psychopathic traits. Self-report measures completed by both mothers and adolescents may also be influenced by limited insight or reluctance to disclose sensitive information.

The sample was relatively small, came from a single U.S. healthcare system and included only adolescents already diagnosed with conduct disorder. The findings therefore may not generalize to the broader adolescent population or to other cultural and clinical settings.

The study also did not track childhood maltreatment or other adversities that could influence callous-unemotional traits. The authors call for future research combining genetic data, detailed observations of parent-adolescent interactions and the inclusion of fathers to clarify how caregiver personality and caregiving may jointly shape these traits over time.

Article prepared by Victoria Caldwell.