Callous-Unemotional Traits Moderate Anticipated Guilt and Wrongness Judgments to Everyday Moral Transgressions in Adolescents

Abstract

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits observed during childhood and adolescence are thought to be precursors of psychopathic traits in adulthood. Adults with high levels of psychopathic traits typically present antisocial behavior. Such behavior can be indicative of atypical moral processing. Evidence suggests that moral dysfunction in these individuals may stem from a disruption of affective components of moral processing rather than from an inability to compute moral judgments per se. No study to date has tested if the dissociation between affective and cognitive dimensions of moral processing linked to psychopathic traits in adulthood is also linked to CU traits during development. Here, 47 typically developing adolescents with varying levels of CU traits completed a novel, animated cartoon task depicting everyday moral transgressions and indicated how they would feel in such situations and how morally wrong the situations were. Adolescents with higher CU traits reported reduced anticipated guilt and wrongness appraisals of the transgressions. However, our key finding was a significant interaction between CU traits and anticipated guilt in predicting wrongness judgments. The strength of the association between anticipated guilt and wrongness judgement was significantly weaker for those with higher levels of CU traits. This evidence extends our knowledge on the cognitive-affective processing deficits that may underlie moral dysfunction in youth who are at heightened risk for antisocial behavior and psychopathy in adulthood. Future longitudinal research is required to elucidate whether there is an increased dissociation between different components of moral processing from adolescence to adulthood for those with high psychopathic traits.

Keywords: Callous-unemotional (CU) traits; adolescence; moral emotion; moral judgement; psychopathy.

Figure 1

Everyday Moral Transgressions task. Each trial was composed by A to D phases. (A) A black screen was displayed before the beginning of the cartoon. (B) During the first 4 s of the cartoon, the avatar's goal is established (e.g., running to get to the train on time). (C) In the following 6 s, to achieve his goal, the avatar inflicts harm to another person (e.g., pushes someone out of the way, throwing her to the ground). The cartoon is then followed by a question asking participants to anticipate guilt (D1) or perform a wrongness appraisal (D2), depending on the experimental block.

Figure 2

Scatter plots depicting the associations between CU traits (X axes) and anticipated guilt (graph on the left) and wrongness (graph on the right) ratings to moral transgressions. The black lines at each graph illustrate linear effects of CU traits on guilt and wrongness ratings, respectively. The shaded area (in gray) represents the 95% confidence interval of the prediction.

Figure 3

Graph depicts the association between anticipated guilt and wrongness judgments to everyday moral transgressions as moderated by CU traits. The shaded area for each category (i.e., “Low” in light pink, “Medium” in light red, and “High” in dark red) represents the 95% confidence interval of the prediction. The strength of the association between anticipated guilt and moral judgments was significantly weaker for those adolescents with higher levels of CU traits.