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Attachment-Related Mentalization Moderates the Relationship Between Psychopathic Traits and Proactive Aggression in Adolescence

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Abstract

The lack of affective responsiveness to others’ mental states – one of the hallmarks of psychopathy – is thought to give rise to increased interpersonal aggression. Recent models of psychopathy highlight deficits in attachment security that may, in turn, impede the development of relating to others in terms of mental states (mentalization). Here, we aimed to assess whether mentalization linked to attachment relationships may serve as a moderator for the relationship between interpersonal aggression and psychopathic traits in an adolescent community sample. Data from 104 males and females with a mean age of 16.4 years were collected on mentalization capacities using the Reflective Functioning Scale on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Psychopathic traits and aggressive behavior were measured via self-report. Deficits in mentalization were significantly associated with both psychopathic traits and proactive aggression. As predicted, mentalization played a moderating role, such that individuals with increased psychopathic tendencies did not display increased proactive aggression when they had higher mentalizing capacities. Effects of mentalization on reactive aggression were fully accounted for by its shared variance with proactive aggression. Psychopathic traits alone only partially explain aggression in adolescence. Mentalization may serve as a protective factor to prevent the emergence of proactive aggression in spite of psychopathic traits and may provide a crucial target for intervention.

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Notes

  1. Following the recommendations by Fidell and Tabachnick (2003), we checked for outliers prior to hypothesis testing. Two data points in RPQ-Pro, one data point in RPQ-Re, and one data point in PPI-R were identified as representing absolute z-values > 2.5. However, we did not correct for these outliers as they did not affect any of the results presented below.

  2. Based upon these findings and given that the partial correlation between RF and psychopathy was at least marginally significant, r = −0.18, p = 0.08 (controlling for gender, age, immigration status, and general intelligence), it seemed reasonable to test whether RF would mediate the relationship between psychopathy and aggression or whether psychopathy would mediate the relationship between RF and aggression. For this purpose, we tested respective indirect effects (controlling for covariates) using bias corrected and accelerated bootstrap confidence intervals (based upon 5,000 bootstrap replicates, see Preacher and Hayes 2008). However, none of the indirect effects were significant, both when using proactive and reactive aggression as the outcome variable. Thus, we did not find any indication for mediation in our data.

  3. Note that omitting the four covariates in the first step did not change the results, i.e. both interaction effects remained significant.

  4. Nonetheless, mentalizing may potentially protect against mistaking harmless but ambiguous social signals for threat cues (e.g., “hostile attribution bias”), which, in turn, trigger aggressive acts that may appear unprovoked and proactive to an outside observer, but biologically function according to reactive patterns.

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Acknowledgments

This research was conducted with the help of funds from the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, University of Kassel, International Psychoanalytic Association and German Psychoanalytic Society. We would like to thank Fritz Hasper, Ramon Rodriguez-Sanchez. Marie Lübs and Christian Curth for their efforts during data-collection. In addition, we would like to express our gratitude to cooperating institutions, namely the Victim-Offender-Mediation Bremen (TOA Bremen e.V.), the Association for the Promotion of Accepting Youth-Work, (VaJa e.V.) and the comprehensive schools in Kassel, who granted us access to research participants.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Svenja Taubner & Johannes Zimmermann

  2. International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Svenja Taubner

  3. Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

    Lars O. White

  4. Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, London, UK

    Peter Fonagy & Tobias Nolte

  5. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Kassel, Arnold-Bode-Str. 10, 34109, Kassel, Germany

    Svenja Taubner

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Taubner, S., White, L.O., Zimmermann, J. et al. Attachment-Related Mentalization Moderates the Relationship Between Psychopathic Traits and Proactive Aggression in Adolescence. J Abnorm Child Psychol 41, 929–938 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9736-x

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