Psychopath
−Term used to describe a person who has cluster of psych, interpersonal and neurophysio features that distinguish them from gen pop; exists on continuum -Deficits or deviance in several areas: 1– Interpersonal relationships 2– Emotion 3– Self-control Lack conscience & empathy making them manipulative volatile & often criminal • Not = psychosis: loss reality contact • Not = antisocial personality disorder • Not = sociopath: impaired conscience
Hare’s categories (3)
Primary Psychopath
is a “true” psychopath, has identifiable psych, emotional, cognitive, bio diffs; outgoing, charming and verbally proficient.
callous, manipulative, glib (shallow talk),
lack anxiety & remorse
pathological liars
Secondary psychopath
Psychopaths committ anitisocial or violent acts because of severe emotional probs or innter conflicts.
Dyssocial psychopaths
- label misleading bc?
display aggressive, antisocial behavior that they have learned from subculture like gangs or families.
- Psychopath label may be misleeading bc their behavior and backgrounds are not simm to primaries.
Antisocial Personality disorder
used to describe a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of others that begins in childhood or early adolscence and continues into adulthood
−are those who fail to conform to social norms whith respect to lawful behaviors. They may repeatedly perfomr acts that are grounds for arrest
−Psychiatric Term APD follows very closely to psychological term psychopathy but APD is more narrow then primary bc it restricts its def to behavioral indictars (Emotional, neuro, cognitive aspects)
Criminal Psychopathy
those psychop’s that engage in repetive antisocial or criminal behavior though not necessarily violent; demonstrate wide range of persistent and serious antisocial behavior. Tend to be dominant, manipulative inndividuals, charactersized by impulsive, risk-taking and antisocail lifestyle
- Commit more serious & violent crimes than non-psychopathic prisoners
• More likely to recidivate after they are released from prison
- have no history of serious antisocial behavior, and persistent serious offenders not necessarily psychop’s
Hervey Cleckley
described in clear and empiraclly useful terms the major behaviors in full fledged primary psychop’s; identified 16 charactersitics
Behavioral Descriptions:
Psychological testing differences
−psychop’s usually score higher on IQ tests than gen pop, particullary on individ adminstered tests
− Hare said psychop’s in his sample prob least intelligent of their group since they were not smart engout to avioid being arrested
− Recent research found that useful dichotomy of psychopthay may be to divide them into succesful ones (avoid getting arrested) and unsuccessful ones.
Overall research indicats many are bright but some arent
Psychopaths and Mental Disorders
Psychopaths and suicide
Other Principal Traits
- A Cardinal fault
− Impulsivity seems to be cardinal feature of psychopathy. Pattern is cylcilical however, they may be responsible/reliable for months but as they attained goals they unravel and become irresponsible and have bad temper (if they are young adult, irresponsible behavior will likely return)
− Cardinal fualt of psychop’s is lack of remorse or guilt regardless of severity or immorality and irrespective of effect on others
Altho high intelligence
- theorists suggest
−Although often above avg intelligence they appear incapable of learing to avoid failure and situations that are potentially damaging.
- Some theorists suggest that the self-destructive deeds relfect need to be punished to mitigate guilt they subcounsciuosly experience or that they are driven by a mascochsitic purpose
Semantic aphasia
- hare says
is what Cleckley called an articaulation of regret for having done something but words don’t have emotional meaning
− Hare says they are semantically and affectively shallow individuals
Imp characteristic is use of?
- diff from
is excessive use of instrumental aggression which is purposful and goal directed aggression used to achive a specific gaol such as pssoessions of another person. Diff from reactive aggression which is considered spontanenous and don’t in response to an envent
Prevalence of criminal psychopathy
− about 1% where in adult prison pops its 15-25%
−Simourd and Hoge report only 11% of inmate pop
− Percentage estimates of crim psycopathy within any given pop should be tempered by type of facility as well as cultural, ethnic, gender and age
−prev of APD in community is 3% in males and 1% in females
Offending patterns of criminal psychop’s:
-resopnsible for disproportionate amount of crime in society and considered most violent and persistent offenders
- Psycopathic sex offenders more brutal and violent than other sex offenders. Appear to be motivated by thrill seeking and excitement rather than simply sexual arousal
−Psycopahts are more sadistic than violent nonpsychopaths and commit more diverse forms of sexual homicides
−Porter found in sample of male offenders, ½ could be classified as sexual homicide offenders
-Rapists who are psychop’s more likely to have nonsexual motivations for crimes such as anger, vindictivness, sadism, opportunism
Murders by nonpsychop’s vs. psychop’s
−Many of the murders and seroius assults committed by nonpsychopaths occurred during domestic disuptes or extreme emotional arousal thereby qualifying as reactive aggression (this pattern rarely observed for crim psychopaths)
Criminal psychos engage in voilence as form of revenge or retribution or during drinking. Many attacks of nonpsychop’s towared women they know well but crim p’s attacks directed at men who are strangers
Measures of Psychopathy (4)
Psychopathy Checklist (PCL)
22-items and currently the most popular instrument for measuring criminal psychopathy.
-The PCL scales largley based on Cleckley’s conception of psychopathy but are specifically designed to identify psychop’s in male prison, foresnsic, or psych pops (cleck’s work based on psych patients)
PCL-R
is 20-itme revison and includes new info applicable in forensic and research settings. Often regarded as gold standard of measurment for psychopathy.
- offenders in other countrise and updated normative data on male and female offenders
- Some scholars believe that the PCL-R has become so popular that it obscures the dinstinction between a measure and a theory. That is the PCL-R is a limited measure of psychopathy not a theory of psychopathy, it is heavily based on those psychops who are convicted not on those who are criminal offenders
Therefore the PCL-R may not be an adequate measure of psychopathy and it doesn’t qualify as a comprehensive theory of psychopathy
Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV)
is 12-itme short version