Paul Frick
Professor and Roy Crumpler Memorial Chair Louisiana State University
- Baton Rouge LA
Dr. Frick investigates the interacting causal factors that can lead children and adolescents to have emotional and behavioral problems.
Areas of Expertise
Biography
• To advance knowledge on the dispositional and contextual factors that can place children and adolescents at risk for developing severe antisocial, aggressive, and violent behavior that results in a diagnosis of Conduct Disorder or an arrest for illegal behavior;
• To uncover the many different causal processes that can lead children to display serious conduct problems, with a special focus on children who show a callous and unemotional interpersonal style (e.g., lacking empathy and guilt);
• To study people at various developmental stages (e.g., infancy, preschool, elementary school-age, adolescence, young adulthood) in order to gain a lifespan perspective on antisocial and aggressive behavior;
• To integrate forensic research on the psychopathic personality and developmental research on conscience development; and
• To use research to improve assessments and interventions for antisocial and aggressive youth in mental health settings, schools, and the juvenile justice system.
Dr. Frick collaborates on research with scholars throughout the world. His research has been supported by the Louisiana Models for Change in Juvenile Justice Initiative, which is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to provide research-based tools and techniques to make juvenile justice more fair, effective, rational and developmentally-appropriate. Work in this laboratory has also been funded by the National Institute of Justice and the W.T. Grant Foundation. Research from the laboratory was also used by the American Psychiatric Association to revise its diagnostic criteria for Conduct Disorder in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Research Focus
Child Conduct Problems & Developmental Psychopathology
Dr. Frick’s research focuses on child and adolescent conduct problems, callous–unemotional traits, and developmental pathways to psychopathy and serious antisocial behavior. He integrates longitudinal cohort studies, psychometric assessments, neurobiological-environmental risk profiling, and intervention trials to refine diagnosis, forecast outcomes, and design evidence-based treatments for at-risk youth in schools and juvenile justice.
Education
University of Georgia
Ph.D.
Clinical Psychology
1990
Accomplishments
Bob Smith, Excellence in Psychological Assessment Award
2021
Contributions in Psychological Science Award
2020
Robert D. Hare Lifetime Achievement Award
2015
Media Appearances
How to tell if your child is a future psychopath
The New York Post online
2018-03-08
Paul Frick, a psychology professor at Louisiana State University and the author of “Conduct Disorder and Severe Antisocial Behavior,” recommends a range of therapies, most of which revolve around rewards systems rather than punishments.
Articles
Trajectories of offending over 9 years after youths' first arrest: What predicts who desists and who continues to offend?
Journal of Research on Adolescence2024
Antisocial and illegal behavior generally declines as youth approach adulthood, but there is significant individual variation in the timing of the peak and decline of offending from adolescence to young adulthood. There are two primary research questions in the present study. First, are there subgroups of youth who follow similar patterns of offending over the nine years after their first arrest? Second, what baseline factors predict which youth will follow each pattern of offending? Data were drawn from the Crossroads study, which includes a sample of racially and ethnically diverse boys who were interviewed regularly for 9 years following their first arrest. Boys were between 13 and 17 years old at the start of the study and were approximately 24‐25 years old at the final interview. Trajectories were measured with youths' self‐reported offending using latent class growth analysis (LCGA).
Teachers as Beacons of Hope: The Mediating Role of Future Expectations on the Association Between Student-Teacher Relationships and Justice-Involved Adolescents’ Grades and Offending
Crime & Delinquency2025
Justice-involved adolescents are at increased risk for poor academic outcomes and reoffending. However, strong bonds with teachers have been shown to promote academic success and encourage desistance. The current study examined whether more hopeful future expectations mediated the association between student-teacher relationships and justice-involved adolescents’ offending and grades, respectively, using data from a longitudinal study of male youth recruited after their first arrest. Findings revealed that stronger student-teacher relationships predicted more positive future expectations which, indirectly, predicted better grades and less offending. These findings underscore the mechanism by which justice-involved adolescents’ school connectedness cultivates hopeful expectancies for the future, which can deter delinquency and promote academic success. Implications for fostering these relationships during re-entry for justice-involved adolescents are discussed.
Effects of neighborhood disadvantage and peer deviance on adolescent antisocial behavior: Testing potential interactions with age-of-onset
Development and Psychopathology2025
Research has suggested that childhood-onset conduct problems (CPs) are more strongly related to individual predispositions, whereas adolescent-onset CP is more strongly associated with social factors, such as peer delinquency. Neighborhood disadvantage (ND) increases the risk for associating with deviant peers. Thus, peer delinquency could mediate the relationship between ND and adolescent-onset CP. This mediational hypothesis has not been tested previously. We tested this hypothesis in 1,127 justice-involved adolescent males using self-reported delinquency and official arrest records over 3 years after the youth’s first arrest as outcomes.
Beyond Reoffending and Rearrest: Expanding the Collateral Consequences of Formal Processing to Youth Homelessness
Justice Quarterly2025
There is robust evidence that juvenile justice contact during formative years is associated with deleterious outcomes. The effect of juvenile court intervention on youth homelessness, however, has received scant empirical attention despite evidence that many justice-involved youth are represented in the unhoused youth and adult population. This study leverages data collected from the Crossroads Study (N = 1115), a longitudinal, multi-site study to explore the impact of formal processing on subsequent experiences with homelessness. This study found that even when accounting for the effect of detention and other factors associated with youth homelessness, youth who were formally processed were twice as likely to report living on the streets compared to their informally-processed peers.
Predictive and incremental validity of adolescent callous‐unemotional traits: longitudinal prediction of antisocial and social outcomes in early adulthood
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry2025
Callous‐unemotional (CU) traits were recently added as a diagnostic specifier for disruptive behavior disorders, largely due to their prognostic utility. However, past longitudinal research has yielded mixed results when investigating associations between CU traits and long‐term outcomes, particularly when controlling for the individual's level of antisocial behavior.
Affiliations
- Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy : Past President
- American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-V Workgroup for ADHD and the Disruptive Behavior Disorders : Past Member
Media
