To Örebro University

There has been a longstanding interest in relationships between autonomic activity during fear conditioning paradigms and antisocial behavior and psychopathy. A considerable body of work has explored electrodermal and cardiovascular responses both in anticipation of, and in response to, fear conditioning paradigms in antisocial participants (Hare 1965; Hare & Quinn, 1976). However, there is a lack of work exploring these associations in adolescent populations, and how these associations may relate to the triarchic model of psychopathy (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009). The current study examined relationships between skin conductance responses (SCRs) and heart rate reactivity (HRR) to a countdown task at ages 9– 10, and the triarchic psychopathy traits at ages 9– 10, 14– 15, and 19– 20 in a longitudinal sample (N = 695) of twins from the Risk Factors for Antisocial Behavior (RFAB; Baker et al., 2013) project. Children and adolescents high in boldness, both rated by themselves and their parents, demonstrated reduced skin conductance both in anticipation of and in reaction to the loud blast. Similar patterns were also demonstrated for heart rate (HR); children and adolescents high in boldness had less HR change during the countdown, and reduced HRR to the blast itself. Implications of these findings for our understanding of the role of boldness in autonomic reactivity to fear conditioning paradigms will be discussed.