Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: Psychopathy is a syndrome of personality characteristics that includes aggressive egocentricity, participation in a wide range of deviant behavior such as physical assault and substance abuse, and lack of empathy, remorse or guilt. Although there has been intense interest in the application of the construct of psychopathy among juveniles, few studies have investigated psychopathic traits among adolescent females. This is an important area given the recent relative increases in violent crime committed by women and girls, and evidence that psychopathy may express itself differently for females versus males. This paper attempts to fill a gap in this area by assessing the relationships between psychopathy subscale scores and substance abuse, mental health, and delinquency variables in a sample of 94 female offenders in a state population of residential youth referred by juvenile court. Specifically, we hypothesize that psychopathy subscale scores will predict increases in measures of violence, hostility, and lifetime polysubstance use while controlling for demographic and relevant risk variables. Methods: Structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 94 female juvenile offenders (M = 15.4, SD = 1.1) recruited from 27 Division of Youth Services residential care facilities in a large Midwestern state. The sample recruitment protocol ensured that no youths who had completed the interview at one facility, then attempted to complete or were successful in completing the interview at another facility. The study protocol was approved by the appropriate human subjects review board. A number of well established measures of psychopathy, antisocial behavior, polysubstance use, and psychiatric co-morbidity were administered along with collection of demographic data. Results: Analyses revealed that our hypotheses were confirmed, i.e. psychopathy traits do possess incremental validity in predicting violent behavior, hostility, and substance abuse. The percentage of explained variance in our hierarchical regression models was substantial; ranging from 14% for violent offending to 18% for polysubstance abuse and finally, approximately 29% for hostility. Further, specific traits were more predictive than others for these outcomes. Thus, results indicate that interpersonal facets of psychopathy are important predictors of externalizing problem behaviors in adolescent females. Implications for research and practice: Given the demonstrated importance of interpersonal facets of psychopathy in this study, future research examining psychopathic traits among adolescent females should assess the convergent validity between interpersonal facets such as narcissistic factors and anxiety and depressive disorders. In addition, qualitative data detailing the situational encounters leading to violence relative to interpersonal psychopathy facet scores would be illuminating and could provide rich information to guide the development of intervention models to teach girls skills in effectively managing situations that pose risk for offending. Impulsivity factors suggest an avenue for future research as well as a prevention and intervention possibility. It may be that parenting practices may exert differential effects on girls compared to boys. In sum, findings suggest that either pre-existing or newly developed interventions for troubled girls are likely to have greater benefit if interpersonal facets are incorporated.