Scientists claim that unemotional traits in babies can hint at future personality

It’s possible to predict whether tiny babies will develop unemotional traits, which may be a precursor to adult psychopathy, researchers have claimed. 

For the first time, psychiatrists have shown that it’s possible to predict at just five weeks old whether babies will develop callous-unemotional (CU) traits, by checking if they prefer look at a human face, or an inanimate object, such as a ball.

Children with CU traits are defined as showing impaired emotion recognition, reduced responsiveness to others’ distress and a lack of guilt or empathy.

They also found that in girls at least, babies can be turned away from developing callous unemotional behaviour as toddlers by particularly sensitive mothering.

Limbs-in-the-Loch murderer William Beggs, the Dunblane mass killer Thomas Hamilton, and the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik, are all known to have displayed psychopathic traits, though the researchers warn they are ‘extreme’ examples.

For the study, researchers from King’s College London, the University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool recorded the responses of a random sample of 213 mothers and babies, drawn from a population-based sample of 1,233 first-time mothers.

Infants’ preferential face tracking at five weeks and maternal sensitivity at 29 weeks were used as predictors of CU traits at two-and-a-half years.