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.

Contact

Louisiana State University

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Biography

Dr. Frick's research investigates the many interacting causal factors that can lead children and adolescents to have serious emotional and behavioral problems. The work of his lab uses this research to a) enhance the assessment and diagnosis of childhood psychopathology and b) design more effective interventions to prevent and treat such problems. Some key goals of this work are to:

• 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.

Areas of Expertise

Juvenile Justice System
Conscience Development
Mental Health
Childhood Psychopathology
Behavioral Problems
Psychopathic Behavior
Agressive Youth

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

Robert D. Hare Lifetime Achievement Award

2015

Contributions in Psychological Science Award

2020

Bob Smith, Excellence in Psychological Assessment Award

2021

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.

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Articles

Predictive and incremental validity of adolescent callous‐unemotional traits: longitudinal prediction of antisocial and social outcomes in early adulthood

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

2025

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.

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Beyond Reoffending and Rearrest: Expanding the Collateral Consequences of Formal Processing to Youth Homelessness

Justice Quarterly

2025

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.

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Effects of neighborhood disadvantage and peer deviance on adolescent antisocial behavior: Testing potential interactions with age-of-onset

Development and Psychopathology

2025

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.

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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