At what age do you think one can realize that a particular person is prone to developing into an antisocial, violent, and psychopathic personality? Some might be surprised, but this can be detected as early as two years of age!
Of course, children are not labeled as psychopaths in any case. However, there are similar concepts for them called callous-unemotional traits or deceitful-callous behavior, which take into account things such as a child’s lack of guilt for bad behavior, a tendency to lie, to be selfish, mean, etc. According to many studies, higher scores in such traits are a strong predictor of a greater risk of violent behavior and the presence of psychopathic traits in adulthood.
However, it is important to highlight the results of several studies on this topic. One study on children aged 4–9 showed that the presence of callous-unemotional traits predicts behavioral problems a year later. Also, their presence at age 3 predicts high and sustained aggressiveness at ages 6–12. And in another study, researchers decided to assess 731 children on a deceitful-callous behavior scale at the age of 2–4 and check how it predicts problematic behavior one year later, as well as at the age of nine and a half.
The results showed that children who scored high on this scale at the age of 2 already experienced serious behavioral problems by the age of 3. Additionally, high scores on it between the ages of 2 and 4 predicted a child’s tendency to break rules and behave aggressively at the age of nine and a half.
Such results once again confirm the conclusions of other studies that psychopathic predispositions emerge at an early age and maintain high stability throughout life. It is very important to take this information into account in order to prevent violent behavior. If we are attentive to children and detect the risk of psychopathy as early as possible, measures can be taken, including therapeutic intervention, which will prevent this risk and resolve the problem of violence long before it arises in practice.
