Online

Falcón, Amanda

Psychology

2020

M.A.

Callous-Unemotional (CU) Traits, a subset of psychopathic traits often used to characterize youth, affect community wellbeing via associated antisocial behaviors such as aggression, substance use, and additional criminal acts. One possible mechanism of the association between CU traits and antisocial behavior is emotion regulation, impairment in which contributes to both internalizing and externalizing behavior. Further, emotion regulation, like CU traits, appears to manifest inconsistently across genders. Given this discrepancy in both the CU trait and emotion regulation literature, an examination of CU traits, emotion regulation, and antisocial behavior within the context of gender is warranted. The current study tested three separate models of this relationship: two in which gender was tested as a moderator of the indirect effect of CU traits on antisocial behavior via emotion regulation, and one in which gender was tested as a moderator of the effect of emotion regulation on the relationship between CU traits and antisocial behavior (a three-way interaction). Results indicated that gender moderates the indirect effect of CU traits on antisocial behavior via emotion regulation difficulties. Specifically, the effect of emotion regulation difficulties on antisocial behavior was significantly greater for males, although CU traits predicted impaired emotion regulation comparably for either group. These findings underscore emotion regulation as a construct worthy of further investigation in the context of CU traits and intervention targeting antisocial behavior, particularly among males.