Social and emotional detachment: a cross-cultural comparison of the non-disruptive behavioural psychopathic traits in children.

Background: Questions about the international reliability and validity of aspects of psychopathy have been raised for adults, but hardly considered when applying the constructs to children.

Aims/objectives: Our aim was to compare the psychometrics of a new instrument to measure psychopathic traits in children between two countries - the Netherlands and Greece. We also tested the hypothesis that, in both countries, both narcissistic-egocentric and callous-unemotional dimensions would be related to observed behavioural disorders.

Methods: The Social and Emotional Detachment Questionnaire was used to assess narcissistic-egocentric and callous-unemotional dimensions of personality in representative national and community samples of 4-12-year-old children in the Netherlands and Greece, respectively. Parents filled in the questionnaires anonymously and also provided ratings of conduct disorders.

Results: A two-dimensional construct of the psychopathic syndrome depicting, respectively, narcissistic and unemotional traits was reliable and valid in both countries, although there was considerable correlation between these two dimensions, which we designated 'social detachment' and 'emotional detachment', respectively. In both countries, the composite of social and emotional detachment was associated with aggressive and antisocial conduct disorders.

Conclusions/implications: The reliability, validity and predictive value of this questionnaire must be tested further, for example, through multiple informants and longitudinally, but our findings that the tool performs robustly in two very different European countries is encouraging in terms of its potential value as a clinical screening tool and a tool for furthering the understanding of serious behavioural disorders in children.