Psychopathy in instrumental and reactive violent offenders.

Can violent offenders who commit acts of instrumental aggression for goal-oriented purposes such as robbery be distinguished from those who commit acts of reactive (or hostile) aggression in response to provocation? Because violent offenders often have a history of both instrumental and reactive aggression, this study distinguished between offenders with a history of at least 1 instrumental violent offense and offenders with a history of reactive violent offenses. Two studies tested the hypothesis that instrumental offenders would score higher than reactive offenders and nonviolent offenders on R. D. Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist. The first study sample consisted of 106 violent and nonviolent offenders recruited from a medium-security correctional facility. The second study sample consisted of 50 violent offenders referred for pretrial forensic evaluation. In both samples, instrumental offenders could be reliably distinguished from reactive offenders on the basis of violent crime behavior and level of psychopathy. Group differences could not be attributed to participant age, race, length of incarceration, or extent of prior criminal record. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy evidence in legal proceedings involving adolescent offenders.

Despite debates surrounding juvenile psychopathy, we do not know how frequently psychopathy evidence is presented in adolescent court cases or how this information is used. To address this gap, we reviewed 111 American and Canadian adolescent offender cases, which included 143 separate evaluations involving psychopathy. Results suggest that psychopathy evidence has been introduced in a sizable number of cases and is becoming increasingly common. While judges generally did not refer to psychopathy evidence in making ultimate legal decisions, psychopathy evidence appeared influential in some cases. In addition, consistent with concerns voiced by scholars, evidence of psychopathy was frequently used to infer that a youth would be difficult or impossible to treat. Conversely, the absence of psychopathy was occasionally interpreted as a sign of amenability and used to support more lenient sanctions. Whereas some cases appeared to attend to key issues that have been discussed in the research literature, such as the need for caution in applying psychopathy labels to youth and the importance of developmentally appropriate assessment strategies, other cases did not. The implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Abnormal selective attention in psychopathic female offenders.

Research on psychopathy in women has generated equivocal laboratory findings. This study examined the performance of psychopathic women in 2 laboratory tasks designed to assess abnormal selective attention associated with response modulation deficits: a computerized picture-word (PW) task, and a picture-word Stroop (PW Stroop) task. Consistent with data from psychopathic men, women receiving high scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 1991) displayed reduced Stroop interference on the PW and PW Stroop tasks. Results suggest that despite some differences in the expression of psychopathy across gender, psychopathic women are characterized by selective attention abnormalities predicted by the response modulation hypothesis and similar to those exhibited by psychopathic men. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy in female inmates: The SCID-II Personality Questionnaire and the PCL-R.

The authors examined the relationship between personality disorders, as measured by a self-report screening instrument, and psychopathy as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991) in female inmates. Participants included 136 women from a maximum security state prison. There was a positive relationship between the Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) scale, which measures conduct disorder before age 15, and the Factor 2 scale of the PCL-R; no other significant relationships with other personality scales were obtained, and there were no evident relationships between any of the personality scales and the Factor 1 scale of the PCL-R. A discriminant function analysis and follow-up receiver operating characteristics analysis indicated that the use of a criterion of 3 endorsed conduct disorder items from the 15-item APD scale was sufficient to correctly identify 71.9% of the women who had been identified as meeting the criterion for psychopathy using the PCL-R interview. However, the scale evidenced poor prediction of nonpsychopaths (specificity = 52.8%). Results indicate the value of using the self-report of conduct disorder items as part of a screening procedure in concert with other measures to select inmates who require further assessment of psychopathy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing alcohol problems in female DWI offenders

The severity of alcohol problems in a sample of 812 women driving while intoxicated (DWI) offenders enrolled in a Drinking Driver Program in New York State was assessed through the use of multiple measures. These women voluntarily provided information through a self-administered questionnaire completed at the beginning of the program. Classification of alcohol problems based on DSM-III-R criteria was compared with classification based on the use of alcohol-specific and nonalcohol-specific measures of alcohol-related problems. Greater hostility and a larger number of drinks ever consumed accounted for nearly 12% of the variance between no diagnosis and alcohol abuse women, whereas these two variables plus age, race, depression, and having a relative with alcohol problems accounted for nearly 41% of the variance between alcohol abuse and dependent women. A subsample of women within each DSM-III-R diagnostic group showed high risk for later, more severe alcohol problems. Multiple measures of alcohol problems help to elucidate subtle differences in alcohol problems within each of the broad categories specified by the DSM, and should facilitate more appropriate intervention and treatment plans for women DWI offenders with alcohol-related problems.     

Identifying persistently antisocial offenders using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and DSM antisocial personality disorder criteria.

Early starting, lifetime criminal persistence has been called sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy. There is, however, disagreement about its core features and which measure is best for identifying such individuals. In the 1st of 2 studies of male offenders (n = 74), we found a large association between scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) antisocial personality disorder criteria scored as a scale. The second study (n = 684) replicated this finding and found that, as previously shown for PCL-R scores, a discrete class (or taxon) also underlies scores on items reflecting antisocial personality disorder. The high association among these sets of items and their similarity in predicting violence suggested that the same natural class underlies each. Results indicated that life-course-persistent antisociality can be assessed well by measures of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and punishment.

An experiment to test the hypothesis that psychopathy is associated with deficient passive avoidance learning under punishment. 75 High Pd and 75 Low Pd female undergraduates, equated for intelligence, learned a list of 10 nonsense syllables under 1 of 3 conditions of reinforcement: verbal reward, verbal punishment, and absence of comment by E. Punishment significantly retarded the learning of Low Pd Ss, but not that of High Pd Ss. No significant differences occurred under reward or neutral conditions. The hypothesis was considered confirmed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and violent crime.

Examined the relations between psychopathy, violence, and impulsiveness of criminal behavior within a White prisoner sample of 76 Ss, using level of intelligence as a moderator variable. Prisoners were given the MMPI, the California Psychological Inventory, the Wide Range Achievement Test, and the IPAT Culture Free Intelligence Test (Scale 2). Unlike most prior research, psychopathy was found to be predictive of violence but only for less intelligent criminals; about 90% of this group had committed a violent crime compared to 58% for the remainder of the sample. Similarly, the psychopaths with limited intelligence evidenced the greatest impulsivity in the commission of their crimes relative to bright psychopaths or nonpsychopathic criminals at either level of intelligence. The implications of the findings for the importance of moderating cognitive variables in personality predictions are discussed. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and lateral preference.

Administered a self-report questionnaire to measure lateral preferences (hand, foot, eye, and ear) in 258 male prison inmates (mean age 29.8 yrs) divided into high, medium, and low psychopathy groups on the basis of a 22-item psychopathy checklist. As a group, Ss displayed much the same pattern of lateral preferences as did a normative group of 1,211 male noncriminals described by C. Porac and S. Coren (1981), with the exception that criminals were more likely to be right-side dominant than were noncriminals. The inmate groups did not differ from one another on any of the lateral preference measures, although there was a tendency for the incidence of consistent left-handedness to be higher in the medium than in the high or low psychopathy groups. Lateral preferences were unrelated to type or severity of criminal history or aggressive and violent behavior. Results conflict with models that attempt to use evidence of sinistrality as a basis for global inferences about cerebral dominance and dysfunction in delinquency, criminality, and psychopathy. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and autonomic conditioning.

Utilized a delayed, differential paradigm to investigate electrodermal, cardiac, and vasomotor conditioning in 18 psychopathic, 18 nonpsychopathic, and 18 "mixed" inmates. 3 tones, each 10 sec. long, were presented 16 times each in random order, alone, or followed by a shock or slide of a nude female. The psychopaths gave very little evidence of differential electrodermal conditioning. However, they acquired differential cardiac and digital vasomotor responses just as readily as did the nonpsychopaths to the CS followed by shock or by slides. Neither group gave any evidence of differential cephalic vasomotor conditioning. The psychopaths exhibited a lower level of tonic electrodermal activity and were less electrodermally responsive than were the other Ss. There were no differences between groups in tonic heart rate or in cardiac or digital vasomotor responsivity. However, the psychopaths responded to shock with cephalic vasodilation while the nonpsychopaths responded with vasoconstriction. (34 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Posttraumatic stress disorder among female juvenile offenders

OBJECTIVE: To assess cardiorespiratory, tissue oxygen and hepatic nicotine adenine dinucleotide hydride (NADH) responses to graded hypoxia. DESIGN: Prospective, controlled, randomized study. SETTING: University laboratory. ANIMALS AND INTERVENTIONS: 18 anaesthetised Sprague-Dawley rats spontaneously breathing either 21% (controls), 12.5% or 10% inspired oxygen concentrations (6 rats per group). MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: All animals in the 21 and 12.5% O2 groups survived the 3-h study period, compared to only 1 in the 10% O2 group. In this latter group, mean arterial pressure and renal blood flow fell immediately with hypoxaemia, whereas aortic blood flow was maintained until the preterminal stages. Critical cellular hypoxia was suggested by an increasingly severe base deficit, an initial rise then a preterminal fall in hepatic NADH intensity and premature death in all but 1 animal. Hepatic NADH fluorescence intensity was unchanged in control animals but showed a progressive rise in the 12.5% O2 group, accompanied by a small though static increase in arterial base deficit. No significant differences were seen in arterial and tissue partial pressure of oxygen between the 12.5 and 10% O2 groups. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates major differences in cardiorespiratory, hepatic NADH and outcome responses to small variations in the degree of hypoxic hypoxia. The fall in NADH fluorescence intensity presages impending death and is likely to reflect failure of cellular metabolic processes.     

Psychopathy and conduct problems in children.

Factor analysis of a measure of psychopathy was conducted in a sample of 95 clinic-referred children between the ages of 6 and 13 yrs. These analyses revealed 2 dimensions of behavior, one associated with impulsivity and conduct problems (I/CP) and one associated with the interpersonal and motivational aspects of psychopathy (callous/unemotional: CU). In a subset of this sample (n?=?64), analyses indicated that scores on the I/CP factor were highly associated with traditional measures of conduct problems. In contrast, scores derived from the CU factor were only moderately associated with measures of conduct problems and exhibited a different pattern of associations on several criteria that have been associated with psychopathy (e.g., sensation seeking) or childhood antisocial behavior (e.g., low intelligence, poor school achievement, and anxiety). These analyses suggest that psychopathic personality features and conduct problems are independent, yet interacting, constructs in children, analogous to findings in the adult literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factor structure of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Youth version in German female and male detainees and community adolescents.

Substantial evidence exists for 3- and 4-factor models of psychopathy underlying patterns of covariation among the items of the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL–R) in diverse adult samples. Although initial studies conducted with the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) indicated reasonable fit for these models in incarcerated male adolescents in the United States and the United Kingdom, only one published study has addressed the factor structure of PCL:YV psychopathy in female adolescents, and no prior studies have addressed it outside of these countries. We used confirmatory factor analysis to investigate the factor structure underlying PCL:YV scores in 314 incarcerated (143 male, 171 female) and 193 in-school (99 male, 94 female) adolescents, ages 14 to 19 years. The 2-factor model provided adequate fit only for incarcerated male adolescents and the 4-factor model was problematic in all samples, but the 3-factor solution provided an adequate model in incarcerated and community male adolescents. None of the models provided consistently acceptable fit among female adolescents. Current findings provide evidence for the robustness of the 3-factor model of psychopathy in incarcerated and community male adolescent samples but raise doubts about the applicability of this model to female adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and laterality of cerebral function.

Used a tachistoscopic recognition task to test the hypothesis that psychopathy is associated with dysfunction of the dominant hemisphere. 55 prison inmates were divided into groups with high, medium, and low ratings of psychopathy. Ss were required to identify 3-letter words presented in a vertical arrangement either in the left visual half field (LVF) or the right visual half field (RVF) 1.5° from a central fixation point. Each of 24 words was presented twice, once in each visual half field, at an exposure time of 80 msec. The exposure time was then shortened to 40 msec, and a 2nd set of 24 words was presented twice, once in each visual half field. In general, words presented in the RVF were more readily identified than those presented in the LVF. There was no evidence that psychopathy was associated with any deficit in RVF performance even when handedness and writing position were taken into account. Further, based on responses to a laterality questionnaire, there were no group differences in "left-sidedness." Results do not support the hypothesis of dominant hemisphere dysfunction in psychopathy. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and physiological responses to adrenalin.

Made physiological recordings while 16 psychopaths (P), 16 nonpsychopaths (NP), and 16 "mixed" (M) Ss received a saline injection, followed 15 min. later by an adrenalin injection. Tonic skin conductance of Group NP was generally greater than that of Groups M and P, a difference that increased throughout the course of the experiment. There were no significant group differences in tonic heart rate (HR), respiration rate, blink rate, or electromyogram (EMG) activity. Both saline and adrenalin injections produced sharp increases in skin conductance, blink rate, digital vasoconstriction, and EMG activity, but these changes were more persistent with adrenalin. Adrenalin also produced large and prolonged increases in HR, while saline had virtually no effect. There were no significant differences between groups in responsivity except in electrodermal activity the increases in skin conductance following saline and adrenalin were smaller in Group P than in Group NP. Physiological responses given by each group were unrelated to scores on the Activity Preference Questionnaire. Results do not support earlier claims that psychopaths show extreme cardiac lability in response to adrenalin, but are consistent with the view that psychopaths are electrodermally hypoactive. (25 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and nonverbal behavior in an interpersonal situation.

88 male adolescents living in a minimum security institution were judged by their counselors on a scale measuring psychopathic behavior. Two extreme groups were composed, with 25 Ss each. These Ss were questioned by a male interviewer in a face-to-face situation about their leisure activities. Trained judges analyzed videotape recordings of the Ss' and the interviewer's nonverbal and paralinguistic behavior. Global judgments of the Ss' emotional states were also requested of the judges. Results show that compared with nonpsycopaths, psychopathic Ss displayed more hand gestures and leaned forward more, thus reducing the distance between them and their partner. They also looked toward their partner's eyes for much longer periods and tended to smile less than nonpsychopaths. On the other hand, when interacting with psychopaths, the interviewer spoke significantly less than with nonpsychopaths. A number of other observed differences in emotional expression between the 2 groups are discussed. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empathy and socialization in repeat offenders, first offenders, and normals.

Results of 2 experiments indicate that normal undergraduates and first offenders both differed significantly from repeat offenders but not from each other on empathy and socialization. R. Hogan's (1969) model of moral development and implications for future research in terms of differentiating between first and repeat offenders in prison groups are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and suicide: A multisample investigation.

Evidence suggests that behavioral aspects of psychopathy are associated with suicidal behavior, whereas the affective and interpersonal aspects are not. The authors tested the robustness of this bifurcated association across 1,711 persons and 12 samples of adult and juvenile criminal offenders, forensic psychiatric patients, and civil psychiatric patients. The authors observed a small but significant partial correlation (.13) between the behavioral/impulsive lifestyle features of psychopathy and suicidality, but no effect for affective/interpersonal features. Several method and sample features (mental disorder; psychopathy and suicidality measurement format) significantly strengthened or weakened this association. The authors conclude that it is not possible to speak of "the" association between psychopathy and suicide, but that this relationship appears to be partially dependent on methodological (i.e., self-report vs. clinician-administered psychopathy measures) and sample composition (i.e., age; mental illness) factors. Recommendations for practice are provided, including that clinicians should not consider psychopathy a buffer against suicidal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)