NCJ Number
221656
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 35 Issue: 2 Dated: February 2008 Pages: 212-227
Date Published
February 2008
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This longitudinal community-based study of school children (n=667) in Sweden focused on the peer relationships of psychopathic youth (12- to 15-years-old).
Abstract
The study found that youth who exhibited psychopathic traits (callous-unemotional, grandiosity-manipulativeness, and impulsivity-irresponsibility) did have friends, and these friendships were fairly stable. These friendships were not only initiated by the psychopathic youth. Peers, in turn, selected friends who were high on psychopathic traits nearly as often as did the peers of youth who were low on psychopathic traits. This occurred mostly for boys, however. The friends of psychopathic youth did not view the friendships as primarily conflictual; however, youth who were high on psychopathic traits perceived conflict in their relationships, indicating that perceptions of the friendships were not reciprocal. The friends of psychopathic youth showed high levels of delinquent behavior, but not high levels of psychopathic traits. This finding suggests that nonpsychopathic friends of psychopathic youth dabble in antisocial behavior and are attracted to the psychopathic youth because of this tendency. Psychopathic personality traits were assessed with the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (Andershed et al., 2002). The existence of friendships was determined by asking the youth to identify four important peers at Time 1. The quality of peer relationships was determined from two subscales of the Friendship Quality Questionnaire (Parker and Asher, 1993). Other variables measured were activities with most important peers and delinquent behavior. 1 table, 3 figures, and 33 references