Social anxiety but not callous-unemotional traits predicts shame coping in conduct disorder

Conduct disorders are characterized by emotional dysregulation. Both callous-unemotional traits and social anxiety are heightened in conduct disorder patients and are associated with different mechanisms of emotion regulation. Previous evidence has proposed that secondary emotions, such as shame, might also be affected in conduct disorder and that callous-unemotional traits and social anxiety might be related to shame as well as to shame coping. Therefore, the current study investigated links between callous-unemotional traits, social anxiety, shame proneness, and shame coping in adolescent inpatients with conduct disorder.

Forty adolescent inpatients with conduct disorders (M = 12.4, SD = 1.4) filled in questionnaires on callous-unemotional traits, social anxiety, shame proneness, and shame coping. Correlational and regression analyses, as well as mediation analyses were performed.

Callous-unemotional traits were not associated with any other construct. Social anxiety showed positive correlations with shame proneness and internalizing as well as externalizing shame coping. Social anxiety was also a significant predictor of internalizing shame coping while controlling for shame proneness and callous-unemotional traits. No predictors emerged for externalizing shame coping. Mediation analyses confirmed that neither shame proneness nor social anxiety mediated the relationship between CU traits and shame coping, as CU traits were not significantly associated with either variable.

The findings suggest that social anxiety plays a key role in internalizing shame coping in conduct disorder patients. CU traits appear to be unrelated to shame proneness and shame coping, either directly or indirectly, in conduct disorder.