PSYO 356: Psychopathy (2024)

What is the CAT-TRI+?

a questionnaire to analyze if your cat is a psychopath

Why is measuring cat psychopathy important?

because it helps owner relationships and by extension reduces the number of pets that end up in shelters or being put down

What key question pertaining to psychopathy did the cat study speak to?

can treatment work?

Stephen Craig Paddock

mass shooter of a Las Vegas concert in 2017, killed 58 people and hundreds more injured
64, killed himself, no history of contact with law enforcement

What was the role of Nature vs. Nurture in the Paddock case?

father was an infamous bank robber on the FBI watch list (possible gene transferred to son) and he was inspired to die in infamy, "decision to murder people while they were being entertained was consistent with his personality"

Dave (14) commits aggravated assault against one of his classmates, sending the other boy to the hospital with severe injuries. A psychological assessment was done where he scored low, what should Dave's sentence be?

1.9 years

Dave (14) commits aggravated assault against one of his classmates, sending the other boy to the hospital with severe injuries. A psychological assessment was done where he scored high, what should Dave's sentence be?

3.7 years

Dave (44) commits aggravated assault against one of his classmates, sending the other boy to the hospital with severe injuries. A psychological assessment was done where he scored low, what should Dave's sentence be?

3.2 years

Dave (44) commits aggravated assault against one of his classmates, sending the other boy to the hospital with severe injuries. A psychological assessment was done where he scored high, what should Dave's sentence be?

7.3 years

Psychopathy, Age and Sentencing Recommendations

in the last six years, youth should receive lower sentences than adults, and sentences for psychopaths should be higher than non-psychopaths, especially for adult males; however, increasing numbers of psychopaths (and non) are choosing the hospital/contained psychiatric option (NCRMD), this is even more prevalent in youth

NCRMD

not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder

Gender for hospital/psychiatric

pretty much the same but women are more likely to be seen as a bad person

What movie psychopath is the most realistic portrayal due to their cold and calculating nature?

Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men

What percentage of the population is a psychopath

1% (.61)

Theophrastus (student of Aristotle) proposed 2 personality types that correspond to current conceptions of psychopathy, they are...

"the man without moral feeling" and "the unscrupulous man"

Kulangeta is an Inuit of Alaska term which roughly means...

repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women- someone who does not pay attention to reprimands and who is always brought to the elders for punishment

Hervey Cleckley

Psychiatrist who was the first to describe psychopathy as a mental illness in which the victim is able to appear normal, but is suffering from a deep-seated mental disorder that is characterized by both affective/interpersonal and is behavioural in nature. Presented this in a series of clinical case vignettes in The Mask of Sanity (1941)

The "mask of sanity" is described by Porter, Woodworth, and Black (2017) as...

"a high level of dangerousness masked by an adept social artistry"

Who is Stanley from The Mask of Sanity?

considered the initial inspiration for this book because he "reflects something of his all but inimitable qualities and skills and convey to anyone who has known him a vivid sense of his presence"

What did a study say about the connections between your hands and psychopathic tendencies

people who have a longer ring finger than index finger are more likely to have psychopathic tendencies

What did researchers from the Centre de Recherche Charles-Le Moyne in Quebec suggest about the relationship between hands and psychopathy?

that psychopathy may be "biologically rooted" and can be understood as a fast life history strategy

What is the role of hormones during fetal development in relation to psychopathy?

higher exposure to testosterone and decreased exposure to estrogen are strongly associated with psychopathy

What role does taste play in psychopathy?

bitter taste preferences are positively associated with malevolent personality traits, with the most robust relation to everyday sadism and psychopathy

What is helping to increase life expectancy according to the first systematic study directly linking this to gains in longevity.

education

Using evidence from industrialised countries such as the UK and US as well as developing countries such as China and Brazil, the review found that an adult's risk of mortality went down by __% for every year in full-time education

2

Do psychopaths have normal understanding of right and wrong?

they do understand the difference, however, they do not care about the harm they cause or the ensue from their morally inappropriate behaviour

What percentage of psychopaths are in prison?

provincial - 15-20%
federal - 20%+....30%

Robert Hare and Psychopathy

-Chief proponent today of psychopathy as a theory of criminal behavior

-worked toward operationalizing Checkley's criteria for psychopathy

-Hare is the author of both the original and revised Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R)

-The PCL-R is the most widely used instrument for the measurement of the psychopathic personality

PCL-R

psychometric properties are well-established, and widely used in forensic assessments (although somewhat controversial)

PCL-R is a 20-item scale requires...

a semi-structured interview
case history information (extensive file review)
reliance on specific scoring criteria

PCL-R Two-Factor Structure

I: interpersonal & affective
II: antisocial/negative behaviour

PCL-R 4 Facets

I: interpersonal II: affective III: lifestyle IV: antisocial

The crux of the PCL-R is

shallow affect and callousness and lack of empathy

Which 2 are not on any of the four facets and some have suggested should be removed as not crucial?

promiscuous sexual behaviour and many short-term relationships

Are there other debated items on the PCL-R that may fit in with the 4-facets?

criminal versatility, juvenile delinquency, revocation of conditional release

Is psychopathy continuous or dichotomous?

continuous

Clifford Olson

(Canada)
murdered 11 children in British Columbia; arrested 94 times between 1957 and 1981 before he was finally convicted in 1982

What did Clifford Olson score on the PCL-R?

38/40

Olson negotiated the most controversial deals in legal history after the Crown agreed to do what in exchange w=for the location of victims bodies.

$100,000 for his family

Olson viewed himself as the...

ultimate serial killer

How is psychopathy different from ASPD and sociopathy?

ASPD is more in line with sociopathy; most psychopaths could also be diagnosed with ASPD, while most people with ASPD do not meet the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy

What did Minzenberg and Siever (2006) say about the DSM-IV criteria for ASPD?

that it is "consistent almost exclusively of behavioural indicators, neglecting the affective-interpersonal features that appear to reflect much of the notion of a distinct personality type as described by Cleckley"

What has the DSM-V revised about a diagnosis for ASPD that was not present in the DSM-IV?

more consideration of callousness and overt manipulation

What is the closest diagnosis to psychopathy in the DSM-V?

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

What 3 disorders from the DSM-V could be combined to get as close to a psychopathy diagnosis as possible?

ASPD + NPD + BPD

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

disturbed emotional capacities may often manifest in hostile reactivity that interferes with stable relationships and adaptive functioning

What is still missing from the DSM-V for psychopathy indicators?

shallow affect (the crux), failure to accept responsibility, glibness/superficial charm

Who is Jon Ronson?

a popular Journalist who seems to have come up with a persuasive argument that the psychopath checklist and DSM-V-TR are dangerous weapons

It takes __ seconds to figure out someone is a psychopath, but after __ seconds, a psychopath can charm initial misgivings away

5, 20

What is the PCL-YV?

a youth version of the psychopathy checklist published by Forth, Kosson, & Hare (2003)

Approximately _/_ of children with severe behavioural problems have callous-unemotional traits

1/3

Why should we be cautious to diagnose a child with psychopathy?

many negative connotations, high scores on psychopathy arguably may be inflated by the general characteristics of adolescence (ex. Narcissism), it also may be worn as a badge of honour

Fledgling psychopath hypothesis

youth who manifest Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), Conduct Disorder (CD), and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) display many behaviours that are consistent with psychopathy seen among adults

Fledgling psychopathy

significantly earlier starting, extensive, and more violent criminal careers than other clients; more career arrest charges, 544% increased odds of being in the 90th percentile for career arrest charges, CHRONIC

Does CD or ODD work best in the psychopathy cocktail?

CD: because it is a pattern of violating the rights of others

What creepy speech pattern can help you identify a psychopath according to Dr. Tarra Bates-Duford?

twice as many terms related to eating, 58% more reference to money, more references to clothing and drinking, less 1st person, more past tense emotion, disfluencies (ex. um's)

Hare - for the past 45ish+.....50 years Robert Hare and colleagues have worked towards operationalizing Checkley's criteria for psychopathy, aimed at the generation of......?

researchers

You can tell something is NQR (not quite right) in __ _________ or less

5 seconds

Waschbusch

one of the top researchers in child psychology

The leader in youth research on callous-unemotional traits is...

Frick

When thinking about linguistic production and attributes when talking about murder, think EMCDFPD

eating, money, clothing, drinking, first person, past tense, disfluencies

SRP III - R12

self-report psychopathy scale is an analogous questionnaire to the PCL-R for a community sample (non-inmates)

What does social media do to psychopathy?

the features that enable quick and easy interaction specifically trigger or exacerbate the individuals impulsive nature

What did The Linguistic Output of Psychopathic Offenders During a PCL-R Interview by Dr. Woodworth and colleagues yield?

less anxiety words and frequent use of personal pronouns were the most significant predictors of PCL-R scores and accounted for 25% of the variance

What is something that may be the most interesting but also the most difficult to research?

success in the business world

__% of 5429 organizations in 40 countries report significant fraud with the financial services industry being at a __% overall risk of economic crime

37; 49

What did Babiak (2007) show about psychopathic features vs. corporate labels?

that the language used to describe a successful employee are also attributable to many of the traits

One in __ bosses 'is a psychopath' but hides it with charm and business speak according to Babiak, Neumann, & Hare

25

A study of more than 200 executives showed that nearly __ percent scored at or above the traditional cutoff for psychopathy using the PCL-R

4

Spencer & Byrne (2016) state what about the likelihood of senior level managers vs. mid-level managers being called corporate psychopaths?

that senior level managers are 8 times more likely

Successful psychopaths do what in corporate environments?

cover their tracks by creating and then effectively managing discrepant perceptions among coworkers

Results of the study Psychopathic traits of business and psychology students and their relationship to academic success (Hassall, Boduszek, & Dhingra) showed...

greater psychopathic traits in business students relative to psychology students on all four factors of psychopathy

Hierarchical multiple regression indicated that four psychopathy factors explained 14% of the variance in grade outcomes of students. What are the four factors?

gender, age, study hours, and course

what two variables are negatively related to grade outcome?

antisocial behaviour and gender (male)

Is there any significant positive relationship between psychopathy factors and academic success?

no

Watts et al. (2016) study found what in regards to the relations between psychopathy and intelligence?

weak relations; suggesting that the link between them may be less robust than theoretical models portray, at least among undergraduates

The dark triad predicts what in Brazilian academia?

cheating

Dark Triad

narcissism, machiavellianism, psychopathy

Machiavellianism and narcissism were positively associated with self-reported _______________ in Brazil study

academic cheating behaviours

In WoW, psychopathy was __________ correlated with manipulation/cheating in (and outside of) the game, and __________ with altruism within the game

positively; negatively

Individuals with characters that had achieved a high level in World of Warcraft scored higher on the ________ component of psychopathic traits

interpersonal/affective