Proactive criminal thinking, cold heartedness, and counselor rapport in correctional clients participating in substance abuse treatment

The purpose of this study was two-fold. The first purpose was to determine whether a self-report measure of cold heartedness (CH) correlated significantly better with proactive criminal thinking (PCT) than with reactive criminal thinking (RCT). The second purpose was to investigate whether cold heartedness was partially responsible for the negative relationship proposed to exist between PCT and counselor rapport. These two hypotheses were tested in a sample of 4638 male and female correctional clients enrolled in substance abuse counseling for an average of 121 to 141 days. In support of the first hypothesis the zero-order CH-PCT correlation was significantly higher than the zero-order CH-RCT correlation and PCT but not RCT correlated with CH when age, sex, and race were controlled. The second hypothesis, that CH would partially explain the correlation between PCT and counselor rapport, also found support in the form of a positive interaction between cold heartedness and PCT in predicting counselor rapport. These results suggest that cold heartedness or callous/unemotional traits are both antecedents of proactive criminal thinking and features of personality partially responsible for the putative rapport-inhibiting effects of proactive criminal thinking.