Psychopathic personality traits and delinquent careers: An empirical examination (original) (raw)
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Journal of Criminal Justice, 2015
Purpose: Criminal career research has recently found that symptoms of psychopathy are more prevalent among offenders following chronic offending trajectories. In the current study, the ability of psychopathy to predict involvement in chronic offending trajectories above other criminogenic risk factors was examined. Methods: Criminal convictions were measured for Canadian male (n = 262) and female (n = 64) offenders at each year between ages 12 and 28. Semi-parametric group-based modeling identified four unique trajectories labeled bell-shape offenders (27.9% of sample), slow desisters (28.5%), slow rising chronic offenders (19.0%), and high rate chronic offenders (24.5%). Results: The four and three factor model of the PCL: YV were associated with the most chronic and serious offending trajectory even after controlling for a variety of relevant criminogenic risk factors. Self-reported involvement in weekly physical fights was a significant predictor of trajectory group membership, but most criminogenic risk factors were more informative of the strength of the relationship between higher symptoms of psychopathy and offending trajectories than of a direct effect of a specific risk factor on the unfolding of offending. Conclusions: Interpersonal and affective symptoms of psychopathy were not related to chronic offending. Future research should examine whether these symptoms are related specifically to involvement in violent offending.
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2008
Both the criminal career and psychopathy literatures have empirically shown that approximately 5 percent of the criminal population accounts for the preponderance of the incidence of crime; however, these areas of inquiry are largely independent. The current study sought to integrate these literatures using a state population of incarcerated delinquents (n = 723). Descriptive, regression, and ROC-AUC analyses produced significant evidence of the effects of personality and affective psychopathic traits on career criminality net the effects of demographic and mental health controls. Psychopathic traits nearly doubled the total explanatory power of the regression model for career criminality and correctly predicted career criminal membership with accuracies ranging from 70 to 88 percent. Implications of these findings and suggestions for increased integration of criminal career and psychopathy research are proffered.
2001
is a relatively new self-report measure that has shown considerable promise as an index of psychopathic traits in both nonoffender and offender samples. The present study examined the construct validity and predictive utility of the PPI by examining its association with theoretically relevant scales of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) among 60 male prison inmates, and its ability to predict institutional misbehavior in an expanded sample (n = 89). As expected, correlations with the PAI scales were highest for the Antisocial Features (ANT) and Aggression (AGG) scales (rs = .68 and .57, respectively). The PPI also predicted various forms of nonviolent and physically aggressive disciplinary infractions significantly better than chance (point biserial correlations ranging from .26 to .37).
Psychopathic Traits and Delinquency Trajectories in Adolescence
Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 2016
The utility of psychopathic traits predicting various forms of antisocial behavior has been demonstrated extensively. However, there are mixed results concerning which of the three psychopathic personality dimensions-callous and unemotional traits, grandiose and manipulative interpersonal style, impulsive-irresponsible behavior-is the best predictor of antisocial behavior in adolescence. In this study, we examined developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior over four years in adolescence and psychopathic traits as predictors of these trajectories. Participants were 811 adolescents from a longitudinal community sample (M age = 14). Results showed that four trajectories described the development of antisocial behavior from early to middle adolescence in the current sample. Both grandiose-manipulative traits and impulsiveirresponsible behavior were significant predictors of the high and elevated trajectories whereas callous-unemotional traits were not. Our findings underline the importance of studying the dimensions of the psychopathy constructs uniquely and independently of each other.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2004
Results from this study offer incremental support for the construct validity of psychopathy in youth. Psychopathy evidenced better convergent and discriminant validity results than did the disruptive behavior disorders (DBDs) such as oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). Despite this finding, psychopathy scales nonetheless correlated with other forms of psychopathology at a higher rate than was expected, suggesting that comorbidity is high even when psychopathy is used as a classification scheme. Also, hierarchical multiple regression was used to determine whether psychopathy offered an improvement in the prediction of previous violent and nonviolent offenses. The results for the current study were mixed, with only the PCL-YV significantly predicting previous violent and nonviolent offenses beyond the DBDs. The findings indicate that psychopathy may offer incremental improvement over DBDs with regard to level of comorbidity and perhaps even prediction. However, simply extending the adult construct of psychopathy to youth without considering the array of psychopathology that may accompany adolescent psychopathy could be misleading.
Psychopathic traits in young offenders vs. non-offenders in similar socioeconomic condition
Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria, 2014
Objective: To analyze the differences in psychopathic traits between offender and non-offender youths with similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Method: The Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) scale was used to identify whether 39 young offenders with no history of mental disorders or criteria for psychopathy exhibited differences in its total score, and specifically for factor 1 or factor 2 of this scale, when compared with 32 other young people, living in similar socioeconomic conditions, who had not committed offenses. Results: We observed statistically significant between-group differences (p , 0.01) in mean PCL-R scores, with a mean score of 13.4 in the offender group vs. 2.1 in the non-offender group. We also detected significant between-group differences when we analyzed mean factor 1 (p , 0.01) and factor 2 (p , 0.01) scores separately. Although the groups exhibited statistically significant difference in educational attainment, between-group comparison of mean PCL-R scores controlling for educational attainment by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) showed that the difference in PCL-R scores remained statistically significant (p , 0.01). Conclusions: We conclude that, in this sample, the presence of both primary (interpersonal/affective characteristics) and secondary (lifestyle/antisocial behavior) psychopathic traits differed between offender and non-offender youths, even when excluding psychopathy and other mental disorders from the assessments. These results suggest a need for wide-ranging interventions, not restricted to socioeconomic aspects, for the management of juvenile delinquency.
Psychopathic traits and offending trajectories from early adolescence to adulthood
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2014
Measures of adolescent psychopathy have yet to be examined in offending trajectory studies. This may explain why identifying etiological differences between individuals following high-rate and moderate-rate offending trajectories has remained elusive. The current study used the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) to examine psychopathic traits and offending trajectories within a sample of incarcerated offenders. Methods: Convictions were measured for Canadian male (n = 243) and female (n = 64) offenders at each year between ages 12 and 28. Semi-parametric group based modeling identified four unique trajectories: adolescence-limited (AL) (27.3% of sample), explosive-onset fast desister (EOFD) (30.6%), high-rate slow desister (HRSD) (14.6%), and high frequency chronic (HFC) (27.5%). Findings: Both a three and a four factor model of psychopathy were tested, and both factor structures were positively and significantly associated with the HRSD and HFC trajectories. Regarding individual factors of psychopathy, the 'Antisocial' factor of the PCL:YV was the only individual dimension significantly associated with membership in high-rate compared to moderate-rate offending trajectories. Conclusions: Psychopathic traits appear more commonly present amongst individuals who follow chronic versus moderate offending trajectories. Implications for early intervention and risk management of offenders are discussed.
2004
Abstract Although a large body of research has established the relevance of psychopathy to adult offenders, its relevance to adolescent offenders is far less clear. The current study evaluated the clinical, psychosocial and criminal correlates of psychopathic traits in a sample of 226 male and female incarcerated adolescent offenders. According to an 18-item version of the Psychopathy Checklist—Youth Version (PCL-YV; Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003), only 9.4% exhibited a high level of psychopathic traits (PCL-YV≥ 25).