| Abstract: | 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) |
