The Social Correlates to Callous-Unemotional Traits in a Sample of High School Students

Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits are strongly related to early-onset and severe levels of conduct problems. How-ever, much less research has focused on their association with potential problems in adolescents' social relation-ships. Further, it is important to determine if CU traits explain variance in important social variables, indepen-dent of conduct problems or general personality dimen-sions related to sociability, like agreeableness. In the current study, we examined the association of CU traits with a range of social variables in a community sample of Italian adolescents (N = 563; 460 girls; mean age =15.80, SD = 1.50). Measures for the social variables included assessment of peer rejection, adolescents' proso-cial behaviors, satisfaction in peer relationships, and feel-ings of connection with school and classmates. We also obtained self-report ratings of CU traits, conduct prob-lems (CP) and agreeableness. Analyses showed that CU traits were significantly associated with all the social vari-ables. After controlling for CP and agreeableness, CU traits were still positively associated with ratings of peer rejection and negatively associated with prosocial behav-ior and satisfaction in relationships with peers. However, the negative associations with feelings of connection to school and peers were no longer significant. These find-ings provide further support for the clinical usefulness of CU traits and further evidence for potential targets of intervention, particularly focused on the adolescent's relational skills.