New York: Researcher have found that young children who exhibited less fear and desire for social connection and who engaged less frequently in a copycat behaviour called arbitrary imitation developed more callous-unemotional (CU) traits, which are known to lead to anti-social behaviour later.
A link between anti-social or aggressive behaviour and CU traits—characterised by lack of empathy, guilt, and reduced sensitivity to others’ emotions—is already well known, according to the study.
This translates to a child who is “less compassionate, doesn’t care about breaking the rules, doesn’t change a behaviour when they’re told, ‘If you do X, this bad thing will happen’,” said study researcher Rebecca Waller from University of Pennsylvania in the US.
For the findings, the researchers used data from the Boston University Twin Project. During two two-hour lab visits, at age 3 and again at age 5, children played out several scenarios, like offering a parent ‘candy’ from a canister that actually contained a stuffed snake, popping bubbles, or separating different-coloured beads into piles.
Analysis of the children’s behaviours showed that less fearful children who cared less about social connections at the first visit were more likely to develop callous-unemotional traits by the second. “Fearlessness on its own is not the only ingredient, these children also don’t feel, to the same degree, that inherent motivation and reward from having positive social bonding with others,” said Waller. The researchers also found that harsh parenting—which includes tactics like yelling and spanking—intensified the fearlessness and strengthened the link with later CU traits.
