Pursuing the Developmental Aims of the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy: Creation and Validation of Triarchic Scales for Use in the USC: RFAB Longitudinal Twin Project

The Triarchic Model Across Development

A major goal of the triarchic model was to link together the literatures on early temperament, juvenile conduct problems, and adult psychopathy through reference to dispositional constructs that could be measured across the lifespan while retaining relevance to the prediction of adult psychopathy. For many years, psychopathy was studied primarily in adult samples (Hare, 1980; Frick, Bodin, & Barry, 2000). It was only within the last 25 years that researchers began to extend the conceptualization of psychopathy downwards into childhood and adolescence (see Frick, O’Brien, Wooten, & McBurnett, 1994), with a particular emphasis on callous-unemotionality (CU) as a predictor of stable, severe conduct problems (Frick & White, 2008). This more recent body of research has provided insight into the possibility of intervening early in life, prior to the onset of adult psychopathy, when features of this condition may be more amenable to change (Frick, Ray, Thornton, & Kahn, 2014). Building on the CU literature, one of the major goals of the triarchic model was to provide a framework for research on how adult psychopathy develops from earlier precursors — including, but not limited to, CU tendencies, which are analogous to triarchic meanness. Relatedly, the model encourages research on the extent to which psychopathic traits remain stable or change across time and influence the expression of problem behaviors across development.

Although the existing child psychopathy literature provides important information about temperamental and environmental influences on callousness (meanness), this trait does not exist in a vacuum; given theorized differences in neural systems for the three triarchic traits and their contrasting neural and behavioral correlates, it becomes important to investigate overlap versus distinctiveness in their etiologies and developmental trajectories. In particular, the triarchic model considers weak affective-behavioral restraint in infancy (i.e., “difficult temperament”; Patrick et al., 2009) to be an important precursor of both meanness and disinhibition to the extent that it reflects poor executive functions and emotion dysregulation (disinhibition) and promotes coercive interactions and interferes with secure attachment (meanness). Additionally, temperamental fearlessness in infancy is theorized to contribute to both boldness and meanness, with its multifinal expression guided by the adequacy (boldness) versus failure (meanness) of socialization processes. Overall, the triarchic model is explicitly developmental in nature and provides a theoretical framework for understanding longitudinal temperamental and experiential processes contributing to varied presentations of psychopathy in adulthood (Patrick et al., 2009).

A number of recent studies have provided evidence for the reliability and separability of the triarchic traits in adolescence and begun to delineate developmental precursors that may contribute to the traits in young adulthood. Somma, Borroni, Drislane, & Fossati (2016) found good internal consistency and 3-month test-retest reliability for each triarchic trait in three samples of Italian high school students. Moreover, the individual traits were associated with measures of normal-range (e.g., Five-Factor Model) personality in patterns that mirrored prior findings in adults (Poy, Segarra, Esteller, López, & Moltó, 2014). Subsequent work similarly found that the triarchic traits were associated with theoretically-relevant criterion measures in Greek-Cypriot adolescents — i.e., boldness was associated with secure attachment and low anxiety, fear, and hostility; meanness with CU, hostility, low sympathy, lack of attachment, and antisocial symptomatology; and disinhibition with impulsivity, anxiety, hostile aggression, insecure attachment, and multiple forms of externalizing symptomatology (Kyranides, Fanti, Sikki, & Patrick, 2017; see Sica, Ciucci, Baroncelli, Frick, & Patrick, 2019, for parallel findings in an Italian adolescent sample). Further, Kyranides et al. (2017) showed that the traits were physiologically differentiable in adolescence: boldness was correlated with low resting heart rate and blunted cardiac reactivity to violent films, whereas meanness was associated with reduced startle potentiation during violent films. Recent work has even extended the known nomological network of the triarchic model to middle childhood (Green, Palumbo, Shishido, Kesner, & Latzman, 2020; Palumbo, Patrick, & Latzman, in press), finding that boldness was related to lower concurrent internalizing psychopathology and social problems; meanness was associated with increased externalizing and social problems, as well as internalizing in some studies; and disinhibition was related to greater internalizing, externalizing, social problems, and attention problems. Further, in children, the triarchic traits appear to moderate the influence of parenting on social problems, with boldness representing a protective factor and meanness and disinhibition exacerbating the relationship (Green et al., 2020).

One study to date, by Dotterer et al. (2017), examined developmental precursors of the triarchic traits. Findings provided evidence that greater resiliency and lower negative affectivity during childhood/adolescence predicted higher boldness in young adulthood, and lower reactive control in early childhood predicted higher disinhibition in young adulthood. By contrast, meanness in young adulthood was not consistently preceded by distinct child or adolescent risk factors.

Taken together, prior work has provided reliable support for the differentiability of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition in youth and has begun to explicate the developmental precursors of the traits. However, a great deal of research remains to be done, particularly with regard to assessing the triarchic model traits repeatedly over a longer developmental period and examining concomitant and longitudinal relations with neural systems variables and clinical symptomatology, as well as changes in heritability over time.

Operationalizing the Triarchic Model

Most research on the triarchic model has utilized the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM; Patrick, 2010), a 58-item self-report inventory that was developed to operationalize the triarchic constructs in adults. Extensive work has demonstrated the reliability and validity of the TriPM in adult samples (Sellbom, Lilienfeld, Fowler, & McCrary, 2018), with a small but growing literature on its utility in adolescent samples. The advent of large-N longitudinal studies provides many opportunities to examine the development of psychopathy from a triarchic perspective, but no study to date has administered the TriPM at multiple time points.

Importantly, however, the TriPM constitutes only one operationalization of the triarchic model traits; these trait constructs can also be measured using sets of items from more commonly used personality and psychopathology questionnaires. For example, using a consensus-rating approach, Drislane et al. (2015) developed effective triarchic scales using items from the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory and demonstrated their convergent and discriminant validity in relation to both child and adult psychopathy and normal-range personality inventories. A similar approach has been employed to develop triarchic scales using items from various other inventories including the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (Brislin, Drislane, Smith, Edens, & Patrick, 2015), the NEO Personality Inventory – Revised (Drislane, Brislin, Jones, & Patrick, 2018), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (Sellbom et al., 2016), the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (Drislane et al., 2019), and the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (Hall, Drislane, Patrick, Morano, & Poythress, 2014). Such efforts have allowed for investigation of psychopathy and its distinctive facets in datasets collected for other purposes.

Building on these efforts to develop triarchic scales using items from individual inventories, Brislin et al. (2019) constructed and validated a triarchic disinhibition scale using items from multiple questionnaires administered to participants in the European IMAGEN project, a large-scale longitudinal study. Although no single questionnaire in this study provided adequate content coverage of the triarchic construct of disinhibition, ratings of items from different questionnaires for their construct-relevancy (see Hall et al., 2014) revealed several that appeared pertinent to the construct of disinhibition. This candidate item set was refined on the basis of psychometric analyses to yield a final scale measure of disinhibition consisting of 22 items from five questionnaires. Psychometric properties of the IMAGEN-Disinhibition scale were examined at ages 14 and 16, and concurrent and longitudinal analyses were conducted using other questionnaires and executive function tasks as criterion measures. The IMAGEN-Disinhibition scale was also administered to a separate undergraduate sample and validated in relation to brain response measures known to correlate with other operationalizations of triarchic disinhibition.

Overall, results from this study by Brislin et al. (2019) demonstrated that the IMAGEN-Disinhibition scale, composed of individual items from different questionnaires, provided a reliable and valid index of triarchic disinhibition within the IMAGEN project, despite the absence of explicit psychopathy measures in this dataset. The scale is now being used in follow-up work to explicate the development of triarchic disinhibition over time and its associations with functional neuroimaging measures and clinical symptomatology.

The Current Study

The current study was undertaken to operationalize the three trait constructs of the triarchic model in another large-scale longitudinal dataset — collected for the University of Southern California Risk Factors for Antisocial Behavior (USC RFAB) project — to set the stage for future investigations of the development of psychopathic traits using this dataset. The USC RFAB project includes a number of design features that make it valuable for examining antisocial behavior through a developmental lens. The sample for this study consists of monozygotic and dizygotic twins and triplets assessed approximately every 2 to 3 years, beginning at ages 9 to 10 (Wave 1) and ending at ages 19 to 20 (Wave 5). Data from multiple measures and informants (i.e., self-, parent-, and teacher-report) were collected at each time point to assess biological and social influences on externalizing psychopathology — particularly antisocial behavior — across development.

To date, the RFAB study has helped to elucidate genetic, physiological, and behavioral aspects of externalizing psychopathology and antisocial behavior (Baker, Jacobsen, Raine, Lozano, & Bezdjian, 2007; Gao, Tuvblad, Schell, Baker, & Raine, 2015; Niv et al., 2015; Tuvblad, May, Jackson, Raine, & Baker, 2017), with a number of published works focusing specifically on psychopathy (e.g., Sobhani, Baker, Martins, Tuvblad, & Aziz-Zadeh, 2015; Tuvblad, Bezdjian, Raine, & Baker, 2013; Tuvblad et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2012). These papers primarily utilized the Child Psychopathy Scale (CPS; Lynam, 1997), which was administered at each assessment wave. However, the CPS was not developed to index psychopathy according to the triarchic model and its items are not organized into subscales reflecting the triarchic trait constructs. As a result, research on the triarchic model using the RFAB dataset has been limited to cross-sectional analyses of Wave 5 (i.e., ages 19–20), at which time the TriPM was administered (see Tuvblad et al., 2019).

As a basis for utilizing the RFAB dataset to address previously unexamined questions regarding the etiologies of the triarchic model traits and their developmental trajectories and interplay across time, we sought to develop triarchic scale measures using items drawn from content-relevant inventories administered at all study assessment points, similar to the approach used by Brislin et al. (2019). The availability of triarchic scale measures in this longitudinal-twin dataset can allow for future examinations of the etiology and developmental course of the triarchic traits over an extended time period (i.e., from ages 9–10 through 19–20), and further advance knowledge of their nomological networks in relation to variables from diverse contexts and modalities of measurement — including self- and other-rated attributes, life experiences, family and other social relationships, cognitive and affective task-performance, psychophysiological response, and clinical symptomatology. As such, the current work represents a key first step toward use of this unique dataset to undertake multi-modal investigations of the development of psychopathy from a triarchic model perspective, with implications for early identification and proactive intervention.

We report here on the development of RFAB-Triarchic (-Tri) scales at Wave 3 (ages 14–15) and their validation at both Waves 3 and 5 (ages 14–15 and 19–20). We present findings regarding the psychometric properties of these scales within each of these time points, and their stability and specificity across the two time points. We also report evidence for the convergent and discriminant validity of the scales in relation to clinical criterion measures, both concurrently (within each time point) and longitudinally (across time points). Broadly speaking, we predicted that the three RFAB-Tri scales would relate selectively to their TriPM counterparts, both concurrently (at Wave 5) and prospectively (from Wave 3 to Wave 5), and show theory-consistent relations with clinical criterion measures. Specifically, we hypothesized that: (1) RFAB-Boldness would relate selectively to TriPM Boldness and be associated with lower levels of anxious-depressive (internalizing) symptomatology and perhaps increased levels of some externalizing symptoms, such as substance abuse (Drislane et al., 2019; Hicks, Iacono, & McGue, 2014) and property-related offenses (Drislane et al., 2019; Gray et al., 2019); (2) RFAB-Meanness would relate selectively to the Meanness scale of the TriPM and the Callous-Unemotional symptom facet of the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick & Hare, 2001) and be associated in particular with exploitative and destructive forms of externalizing behavior; and (3) RFAB-Disinhibition would relate selectively to the Disinhibition scale of the TriPM and the Impulsivity facet of the APSD, and show positive associations with more externalizing problems of various types including antisocial, impulsive, and substance use behaviors.

Participants

Participants were twins and triplets from the University of Southern California’s Longitudinal Study of Risk Factors for Antisocial Behavior (RFAB) project (Baker et al., 2013). As noted earlier, data collection for the RFAB project occurred over five waves, beginning when participants were aged 9 – 10 years of age, and continuing every 2 to 3 years through age 19–20. The sample was representative of the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the greater Los Angeles area (see Baker, Barton, & Raine, 2002; Baker, Barton, Lozano, Raine, & Fowler, 2006 for details on recruitment and initial inclusion criteria). We developed triarchic scales for the RFAB dataset using data from Wave 3, at which point participants were 14 to 15 years of age, and validated these scales using data from this wave as well as Wave 5 (age 19–20). Importantly, the triarchic scales were developed without reference to the criterion measures used to validate them. The Wave 3 sample as a whole consisted of 1,185 individual twins and triplets (N = 594 families), of whom 51.2% were female; the racial/ethnic composition of this sample was 32.2% Caucasian, 33.4% Hispanic, 12.2% Black, 4.1% Asian, and 18.1% of mixed race. Approximately 80.8% of Wave 3 participants (N = 957) returned for testing at Wave 5; relative to Wave 3 participants as a whole, the sample who returned for Wave 5 had a higher proportion of females (χ² = 24.82, p < .001) but did not differ significantly in racial/ethnic composition (χ² = 7.40, p =12). Because some individuals participated in Wave 5 but not Wave 3, the total number of participants in Wave 5 was 1101 (N = 587 families), of whom 46.2% were female; the racial/ethnic composition of this sample was 32.6% Caucasian, 32.8% Hispanic, 12.6% Black, 3.8% Asian, and 18.2% of mixed race. Participants were included in the current study if they had full questionnaire data for one or more of the analyses conducted at one wave or the other, or across the two waves. This resulted in 927 subjects for analyses in Wave 3, 1,009 for analyses within Wave 5, and 718 for longitudinal (Wave 3 to Wave 5) analyses. As documented in the Results section, ns within these three sets of analyses varied as a function of the availability of data for variables included in each analysis.

Procedure

At Waves 3 and 5, questionnaire measures pertaining to the twins’ personality and mental health were completed by each participant and their parent as part of a larger study protocol that included semi-structured interviews and neurophysiological assessments. Current analyses focused on the youth (i.e., twin participant) self-report data from these two study waves.

Measures Used as Sources of Candidate Items for Self-Report RFAB-Triarchic Scales

Wave 3 Criterion Measures

Wave 5 Criterion Measures

Data Analytic Strategy

The RFAB-Tri scales were developed using data from the Wave 3 assessment, applying a construct rating and scale refinement approach described in prior published papers (Brislin et al.,2015, 2019; Drislane et al., 2015, 2018; Hall et al., 2014). A detailed description of the construct rating procedure and steps in scale construction and refinement is provided in the online article Supplement. The resultant RFAB-Tri scales consist of 10 items for Boldness (4 worded in the direction of high boldness), 10 for Meanness (6 worded in the direction of high meanness), and 12 Disinhibition (8 worded in the direction of high disinhibition). Table A of the online Supplement describes the thematic content of items comprising each scale.

Following development of the RFAB-Tri scales using data from Wave 3, scores for each were computed for this wave and also for Wave 5, utilizing items from the ASR in place of their YSR counterparts at the latter wave. Reliabilities of the three scales were quantified at each wave using Cronbach’s α and coefficient omega (ω). Temporal stabilities were quantified by examining correlations (Pearson’s rs) for each scale across Waves 3 and 5, and specificity of these associations was evaluated using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models in which scores for the three RFAB-Tri scales at Wave 3 were entered as predictors of scores for each, in turn, at Wave 5.

The final RFAB-Tri scales were also examined for concurrent validity in relation to the criterion measures available at each wave. For the Wave 3 criteria — ASPD and YSR scores — associations were examined in terms of (1) simple bivariate associations for each RFAB-Triscale alone, and (2) comparative associations when all three scales were included jointly as predictors in regression models. Given the continuous nature of APSD total and subscale scores, Pearson’s rs and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression coefficients and multiple correlations (βs, Rs) were used to quantify associations with these measures. Version 22.0 of the SPSS statistical package (IBM Corp., 2013) was used to perform analyses of these types. In contrast, YSR Internalizing and Externalizing consisted of symptom-count variables with highly skewed distributions. Accordingly, negative binomial regression models were used to compute incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for each Wave 3 RFAB-Tri scale in two ways: (1) as the sole predictor of either YSR Internalizing or Externalizing (as a counterpart to a simple bivariate correlation), and (2) together with the other two traits in a joint NB prediction model (analogous to a regression analysis). Analyses of this type were performed using the ‘MASS’ package (Venables & Ripley, 2002) in the R statistical environment (v.3.5.1; R Core Team, 2018).

At Wave 5, continuous TriPM scale scores served as direct criterion referents for evaluating the convergent and discriminant validity of the RFAB-Tri scales as measures of the three triarchic traits; the RFAB-Tri scales were evaluated as individual predictors of each TriPM scale using Pearson’s rs, and as joint predictors using OLS regression. Pearson’s rs and OLS regression analyses were also used to quantify associations of the RFAB-Tri scales with age of first use of alcohol and other substances, given the continuous-score nature of these variables. Logistic regression analyses (performed via SPSS version 22.0; IBM Corp., 2013) were used to quantify associations with the “ever used” variables for each substance category and the two “ever arrested” ASB variables (self, relatives), given their dichotomous-score nature. Negative binomial (NB) regression models were used to quantify associations of the RFAB-Tri scales, individually and jointly, with the other ASB variables due to their count nature. NB regression models were also used to quantify associations with ASR Internalizing and Externalizing symptom-count scores, as was done with their YSR score counterparts at Wave 3.

Finally, longitudinal relations of the Wave 3 RFAB-Tri scales with Wave 5 criterion measures were examined. The same analyses described for the Wave 5 concurrent relations were repeated, substituting Wave 3 scales as predictors. All statistical effects were evaluated for significance using a conservative alpha of p < .005.

Item Content of Final RFAB-Tri Scales

The final self-report based RFAB-Tri scales are composed mostly of items from the CPS, along with a smaller number of items from the age-relevant ASEBA measure (i.e., YSR for Wave 3; ASR for Wave 5; see Table A of Supplement). Consistent with the constructs as defined within the triarchic model (Patrick et al., 2009), the RFAB-Boldness items target characteristics of assertiveness/persuasiveness, calmness/confidence, and fear versus fearlessness. The RFAB-Meanness items reflect characteristics of callous-aggressiveness, kindness versus cruelty, and capacity for remorse. Lastly, the RFAB-Disinhibition items assess characteristics of impulsiveness, impatience, and irritability.

Psychometric Properties of RFAB-Tri Scales in Waves 3 and 5: Reliabilities, Scale Intercorrelations, and Temporal Stability of Scores

Reliability coefficients for the RFAB-Tri scales were highly similar for the two study waves. At Wave 3 (ages 14–15), Cronbach’s αs for RFAB-Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition (comprising 10, 10, and 12 items, respectively) were .66, .69, and .72, respectively, and ω coefficients were .67, .70, and .73. Corresponding αs at Wave 5 (ages 19–20) were .72, .68, and 72, and ωs were .74, .68, and .72.

Intercorrelations among the three triarchic scales at Wave 3 coincided with expectations based on prior work: RFAB-Meanness was correlated to a moderate positive degree with Disinhibition (r = .42, p < .005) and to a slight positive (though nonsignificant) degree with Boldness (r = .06, p = .08), whereas RFAB-Boldness and Disinhibition were uncorrelated (r = −.02, p = .51). At Wave 5, RFAB-Meanness was correlated to a similar positive degree with Disinhibition (r = .39, p < .005), but was uncorrelated with Boldness (r = −.02, p = .525). RFAB-Boldness at Wave 5 was somewhat negatively correlated with Disinhibition (r = −.18, p < .005).

As shown in Table 1, RFAB-Boldness and Disinhibition showed moderate stability from Wave 3 to Wave 5, rs = .50 and .48, respectively, ps < .005. RFAB-Meanness showed somewhat lower stability across time, r = .32, p < .005. The specificity of these associations was good: Wave 3 Boldness was the sole independent predictor of Wave 5 Boldness in a multiple regression model (β = .50, p < .005). Wave 3 Meanness was the only significant independent predictor of Wave 5 Meanness (β = .28, p < .005), with the association for Wave 3 Disinhibition falling below our significance threshold of .005 (β = .09, p < .05). Finally, Wave 3 Boldness and Disinhibition were each independent predictors of Wave 5 Disinhibition, with Wave 3 Disinhibition showing a robust positive association (β = .45, p < .005) and Boldness showing a weak negative association (β = −.11, p < .005).

Concurrent Relations of RFAB-Tri Scales with Criterion Measures at Waves 3 and 5

Longitudinal Relations of RFAB-Tri Scales with Criterion Measures at Wave 5

Operationalization of Triarchic Model Traits in the RFAB Study Dataset

One major aim of the current study was to develop scales for indexing the triarchic traits at Waves 3 and 5 (ages 14–15 and 19–20) of the RFAB study, to permit examination of their temporal stability from mid-adolescence to adulthood and to allow for twin-etiologic analyses in the future. Using an approach that has proven effective in prior work (Brislin et al., 2015, 2019; Hall et al., 2014), we created scale measures of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition composed of items from the CPS along with a smaller number of items from age-appropriate ASEBA measures. Despite their brevity (10–12 items each), the scales provided effective content coverage of the triarchic traits and showed acceptable internal consistencies at both Waves 3 and 5.

In line with findings for other triarchic scale measures (e.g., Brislin et al., 2015; Drislane et al., 2014; Hall et al., 2014), a moderate positive correlation was evident between the RFAB-Meanness and Disinhibition scales, both at Wave 3 and at Wave 5. RFAB-Meanness and Boldness were correlated to a nonsignificant positive degree at Wave 3, and to a near-zero degree at Wave 5. RFAB Boldness and Disinhibition were correlated negligibly at Wave 3, but somewhat negatively at Wave 5. In past studies with adult community samples that have used other triarchic scale measures, boldness and meanness have often been correlated to a modest positive degree, and boldness and disinhibition have typically been uncorrelated (Drislane & Patrick, 2017). The significant (albeit modest) negative association between RFAB Boldness and Disinhibition at Wave 5 is the finding that contrasts most with results for other Tri scale sets in adult samples. Of note, however, a significant negative correlation was also evident between TriPM Boldness and Disinhibition in the Wave 5 sample (r = −.14, p < .001). This suggests that this unexpected negative correlation at Wave 5 reflects idiosyncratic characteristics of the RFAB participant sample at this assessment point rather than differential functioning of the RFAB-Tri scale versions relative to their TriPM counterparts.

Each scale also showed significant temporal stability from Wave 3 to Wave 5. Observed stability coefficients for RFAB-Boldness and Disinhibition (~.5 in each case) were commensurate with those reported in a prior study that examined the temporal stability of conceptually-similar psychopathic trait measures from age 17 to age 24 (Blonigen, Hicks, Krueger, Patrick, & Iacono, 2006). Somewhat lower temporal stability (.32) was evident for the RFAB-Meanness score across these two time points. This finding is interesting in light of evidence for an impact of family environmental influences on callous-unemotional tendencies at younger ages of life (Hyde et al., 2016; Pardini, Lochman, & Powell, 2007), and other evidence indicating that the contribution of such environmental influences to antisocial proclivities does not extend into adulthood (Krueger et al., 2002). The implication is that the lower stability of RFAB-Meanness scores from Wave 3 to Wave 5 might reflect a decrease in the role of family influences, such as parenting style (Pardini et al., 2007), in callous-unemotional proclivities from mid-adolescence to young adulthood.³ Importantly, each Wave 3 RFAB-Tri scale related selectively to its Wave 5 counterpart when controlling for Wave 3 scores on the other two triarchic scales (e.g., Wave 3 Meanness related selectively to Wave 5 Meanness when controlling for Wave 3 Boldness and Disinhibition). Taken together, the observed reliability, stability, and specificity of the RFAB-Tri scales appear consistent with those reported in the literature for other triarchic scale measures.

Situating the RFAB-Triarchic Scales in a Nomological Net

A further aim of this study was to examine associations of the triarchic traits as indexed by the RFAB-Tri scales with external criterion measures both in adolescence (Wave 3) and in young adulthood (Wave 5). Results were largely consistent with hypotheses. Importantly, the Wave 5 RFAB-Tri scales – and the Wave 3 RFAB-Tri scales, at expected smaller levels – showed strong and selective associations with their Wave 5 TriPM counterparts in bivariate correlations and multiple regression models.

Consistent with the strong correspondence between the RFAB-Tri scales and their TriPM counterparts, the RFAB scales largely exhibited patterns of associations with concurrently-assessed criterion variables similar to those previously found for the TriPM (for reviews, see Patrick & Drislane, 2015; Sellbom et al., 2018). In line with the idea of boldness being protective against internalizing psychopathology (Patrick et al., 2009; Patrick, 2018), RFAB-Boldness at Waves 3 and 5 was robustly and negatively related to overall anxious-depressive symptomatology assessed concurrently. By contrast, RFAB-Boldness was inconsistently related to externalizing symptomatology as a whole, showing a slight positive association at Wave 3 and a slight negative association at Wave 5. With regard to other measures of psychopathy and antisocial behavior, Wave 3 RFAB-Boldness was weakly positively correlated with overall APSD scores (r = .08, p <.05), but not with any APSD subscales, in line with findings from a prior study of young adults (Drislane et al., 2014). At Wave 5, however, RFAB Boldness was positively related to some forms of concurrently assessed antisocial behavior, particularly when controlling for the other RFAB-Tri scales; indeed, Boldness emerged as the strongest unique predictor of fraudulent behavior and personal arrest history. RFAB-Boldness also showed significant or near-significant associations with use of all substances except prescription medications, and was related to use of marijuana and other illicit drugs at levels similar to Disinhibition. These results are in line with other work showing boldness to be related to lower reactive control (cautious restraint) and greater substance use, in addition to higher resiliency (Dotterer et al., 2017; Hicks et al., 2014). While disinhibition is more obviously related to a lack of cautious restraint, boldness appears to relate to it as well through features of venturesomeness and low social inhibition.

RFAB-Meanness evidenced unique predictive relations, over and above other RFAB-Tri scales, with concurrently-assessed externalizing but not internalizing symptomatology at Wave 3; in contrast, at Wave 5, it was related to both forms of psychopathology. It may be that adversarial encounters and undesired consequences arising from callous-aggressive proclivities are conducive to the emergence of internalizing problems of certain types across time. As expected, Wave 3 RFAB-Meanness showed a selective association with the Callous-Unemotional symptom facet of the APSD at Wave 3, both at the bivariate level and in regression models controlling for the other traits. Wave 5 RFAB-Meanness was also related to most forms of concurrently-assessed antisocial behavior, with associations strongest in relation to callous, violent, and destructive forms of antisocial behavior – in line with the triarchic model’s characterization of meanness as involving callous-aggressiveness (Patrick et al., 2009). Like Boldness, Meanness showed a unique predictive association with personal arrest history, but — unlike Boldness (though similar to Disinhibition; see below) — showed some evidence of an association with family arrest history.

In contrast to Meanness, RFAB-Disinhibition was uniquely predictive of concurrently assessed externalizing and, to a lesser extent, internalizing symptomatology at both Waves 3 and 5, demonstrating larger effects than those for Meanness. These findings accord with the idea that trait disinhibition reflects general proneness to externalizing problems (Patrick et al., 2009; Yancey, Venables, Hicks, & Patrick, 2013) and includes an element of deficient affect-regulation (Patrick et al., 2009; Perkins, Sörman, McDermott, & Patrick, 2019) that is directly conducive to internalizing problems (Venables et al., 2017). Consistent with this notion, Wave 3 RFAB- Disinhibition alone showed a selective association with the Impulsivity facet of the APSD. At Wave 5, Disinhibition showed positive associations with most forms of antisocial behavior, with the strongest unique effects for unreliable/impulsive deviancy, stealing, drug-selling, and reckless driving. RFAB-Disinhibition was also the strongest concurrent of use of substances of all kinds, including cigarettes, prescription medications, and other illicit drugs. These findings are consistent with prior work in adults showing that disinhibition represents a liability to diverse forms of externalizing psychopathology, including both antisocial and substance-related problems (Iacono, Carlson, Taylor, Elkins, & McGue, 1999; Krueger et al., 2002, 2007). Like meanness, disinhibition also showed a unique predictive association with personal arrest history and some evidence of an association with family arrest history. The finding that family arrest history was associated jointly with disinhibition and meanness accords with the suggestion (Patrick & Vaidyanathan, 2011) that these traits may underlie to an important degree the well-documented phenomenon of family transmission of antisocial behavior (Frisell, Lichtenstein, & Långström, 2011; Hicks, Krueger, Iacono, McGue, & Patrick, 2004).

While some published work has reported longitudinal predictive relations for the trait of disinhibition in adolescence with later internalizing and externalizing problems (Brislin et al., 2019), the current study is the first to evaluate longitudinal associations of all three triarchic traits with these broad categories of psychopathology, and with antisocial behaviors and substance abuse specifically. Scores on each of these traits at Wave 3 contributed uniquely to problems of particular types at Wave 5. From Wave 3 to Wave 5, RFAB-Boldness showed unique associations with internalizing symptomatology (negatively), callous behavior (positively), and disorderly conduct (positively), as well as trend-level (p < .05) positive associations with physical aggression and most forms of nonviolent antisociality. These findings suggest that in addition to its adaptive aspects, the trait of boldness is also associated with certain maladaptive and antisocial behaviors (e.g., Almeida et al., 2015; Lilienfeld et al., 2012). Wave 3 Meanness showed unique predictive relations with callous, instrumental-aggressive, and destructive forms of antisocial behavior as well as non-medical use of prescription medications at Wave 5, and was uniquely related at a trend level (p <.05) to general externalizing symptomatology. These findings for Meanness are in line with prior work demonstrating that adolescents high in callous-unemotional traits experience less distress related to the consequences of their behavior and are at elevated risk for later conduct problems, delinquency, and substance use (Baskin-Sommers, Waller, Fish, & Hyde, 2015; Frick & White, 2008; Wymbs et al., 2012). Finally, Wave 3 Disinhibition showed the strongest unique predictive association with Wave 5 externalizing symptomatology, and, to a lesser degree, uniquely and positively predicted Wave 5 internalizing symptomatology — in contrast to the negative association for Boldness. From Wave 3 to Wave 5, RFAB-Disinhibition also predicted unreliable/impulsive deviancy, physical aggression, stealing, personal history of arrest, and use of most types of substances, as well as trend-level (p < .05) associations with drug-selling, reckless driving, and family history of arrest. Broadly, results corroborate the notion that disinhibition is a liability factor for a range of externalizing problems (Yancey et al., 2013; Young et al., 2009).

These findings contribute to the existing literature in important respects. They help to address current debates (e.g., Lilienfeld et al., 2012; Miller & Lynam, 2012) regarding the clinical relevance of boldness by showing that this facet of psychopathy predicts later occurrence of certain antisocial and substance use behaviors, while also protecting against the later emergence of internalizing problems. They demonstrate specificity in predictive associations for meanness, akin to the well-established construct of callous-unemotionality (Frick et al., 2014), with later emergence of instrumental-aggressive and destructive antisocial behavior. In addition, they highlight the importance of trait disinhibition — which has received relatively limited attention in the child antisocial behavior literature (Wygant, Pardini, Marsh, & Patrick 2018) — to the later emergence of both physically aggressive and non-aggressive forms of antisocial behavior, along with substance use of various types.

Limitations and Future Directions

Some limitations of the current study warrant mention. One is that the number and range of criterion measures available at Wave 5 was greater than at Wave 3. As such, the reported associations between the RFAB-Tri scales and criterion measures at Wave 3 do not provide as complete picture of the manifestation of the traits at this point (age 14–15) as was possible at Wave 5 (age 19–20). Additionally, compared with the RFAB-Boldness and Disinhibition scales, RFAB-Meanness showed lower stability from Wave 3 to Wave 5. As suggested in the preceding section, this could reflect a shift in the determining role of family environmental influences on Meanness scores from the earlier to the later wave. However, other possible explanations are that participants lacked insight into certain aspects of this trait or were hesitant to endorse them at one age point versus the other. In the future, utilizing multi-informant data (i.e., parent and child) to examine the development of the triarchic traits may provide a clearer picture of how each construct presents over time. With regard to meanness, such an approach could better capture both the internal experience of low emotionality and the behavioral expression of lack of empathy, providing a more comprehensive assessment of this triarchic trait. It will also be valuable in future work to directly evaluate whether differences in the role of shared (e.g., family) environmental influences at different ages account for the lower temporal stability of RFAB-Meanness.

In developing the three RFAB-Tri scales and demonstrating their effectiveness as measures of the triarchic model of psychopathy, the current work sets the stage for valuable follow-up work with this large-scale dataset. In particular, the RFAB study holds great potential for clarifying the etiologic role the triarchic traits play in clinical problems of various types given its longitudinal and twin-participant features and its inclusion of measures from multiple modalities, including self-report, clinical-diagnostic, task-performance, psychophysiological, and neuroimaging data. The availability of effective triarchic scale measures in this dataset will also allow for future systematic progress in characterizing the nomological network of the triarchic model traits with respect to domains of neurobiology and behavioral performance, and in evaluating the etiologic basis of relations of neural, behavioral, and clinical-problem variables with boldness, meanness, and disinhibition (Venables et al., 2017; Yancey et al., 2013; see also Palumbo et al., in press). Given evidence that the triarchic traits represent core biobehavioral dispositions related to diverse forms of psychopathology (Nelson, Strickland, Krueger, Arbisi, & Patrick, 2016; Patrick et al., 2012, 2013), the current work will not only facilitate future research on psychopathy, but also allow for further investigation of the role of heritable biological liability factors and accumulating experiential influence in the emergence and course of other psychopathological conditions.