Psychopathy in Adolescence Predicts Official Reports of Offending in Adulthood (original) (raw)
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The Stability of Psychopathy From Adolescence Into Adulthood
Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2008
This study examines moderators of the relation between psychopathy assessed at age 13 using the mother-reported Childhood Psychopathy Scale and psychopathy assessed at age 24 using the interviewer-rated Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV). Data from more than 250 participants of the middle sample of the Pittsburgh Youth Study were used. Thirteen potential moderators were examined, including demographics (i.e., race, family structure, family socioeconomic status [SES], and neighborhood SES), parenting factors (physical punishment, inconsistent discipline, lax supervision, and positive parenting), peer delinquency, own delinquency, and other individual differences (i.e., verbal IQ, behavioral impulsivity, and cognitive impulsivity). Moderators were examined for the total psychopathy score at age 24 as well as for each of the four PCL:SV facets. After relaxing the criterion for statistical significance, 8 out of a possible 65 interactions were statistically significant. I...
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.
Moderators The Stability of Psychopathy From Adolescence Into Adulthood : The Search for
2008
This study examines moderators of the relation between psychopathy assessed at age 13 using the mother-reported Childhood Psychopathy Scale and psychopathy assessed at age 24 using the interviewer-rated Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV). Data from more than 250 participants of the middle sample of the Pittsburgh Youth Study were used. Thirteen potential moderators were examined, including demographics (i.e., race, family structure, family socioeconomic status [SES], and neighborhood SES), parenting factors (physical punishment, inconsistent discipline, lax supervision, and positive parenting), peer delinquency, own delinquency, and other individual differences (i.e., verbal IQ, behavioral impulsivity, and cognitive impulsivity). Moderators were examined for the total psychopathy score at age 24 as well as for each of the four PCL:SV facets. After relaxing the criterion for statistical significance, 8 out of a possible 65 interactions were statistically significant. Implications of the present findings and future directions are discussed.
Longitudinal evidence that psychopathy scores in early adolescence predict adult psychopathy
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2007
The present study examines the relation between psychopathy assessed at age 13 using the mother-reported Childhood Psychopathy Scale (Lynam, 1997) and psychopathy assessed at age 24 using the interviewer-rated Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV; Hart, Cox, and Hare, 1995). Data from over 250 participants of the middle sample of the Pittsburgh Youth Study were used to examine this relation; approximately 9% of the sample met criteria for a possible PCL:SV diagnosis. Despite the long time-lag, different sources, and different methods, psychopathy from early adolescence into young adulthood was moderately stable, r = 0.31. The relation was present for the PCL:SV total and facet scores, was not moderated by initial risk status or initial psychopathy level, and held even after controlling for other age-13 variables. "Diagnostic" stability was somewhat lower. Specificity and negative predictive power were both good, sensitivity was adequate, but positive predictive power was poor. This constitutes the first demonstration of the relative stability of psychopathy from adolescence into adulthood and provides evidence for the incremental utility of the adolescent psychopathy construct. Implications and future directions are discussed.
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.
Predictive validity of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version for general and violent recidivism
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2004
Several authors have expressed concern regarding the use of youth psychopathy assessments in determinations of risk for general and violent offending. The Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) was completed with 182 male adolescent offenders in this prospective study (average 14.5 month follow-up) of general and violent recidivism. Both a two-factor and three-factor model of the PCL:YV significantly predicted general and violent recidivism at a predictive accuracy ranging from 68 to 63%. However, regression analyses indicated these associations were explained primarily by behavioral psychopathic symptoms, rather than interpersonal or affective traits. Implications for the use of psychopathy assessments for risk during adolescence are discussed.
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.
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2012
Psychopathy has been a sustained interest among psychologists and, to a lesser extent, among criminologists. Studies on psychopathy have tended to focus on its measurement and predictive ability, primarily in adolescence and primarily among more serious offenders. This article moves beyond prior research on psychopathy and is the first to link childhood risk factors and offending trajectories measured through age 40 to psychopathy at age 48 in a community sample of several hundred South London males in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Results show that although childhood environmental and, to a lesser extent, childhood individual risk factors are associated with a range of psychopathy measures, controlling for offending trajectories renders most of those childhood risks insignificant. Evidence also shows that while extreme scores of psychopathy are rare among this community sample, chronic offending is strongly linked to psychopathy.
Psychopathy scores and violence among juvenile offenders: a multi-measure study
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 2004
This study examined the relations between psychopathy scores and violent behavior in 113 incarcerated adolescents. We compared the results of four different instruments designed to assess psychopathy features among juveniles-the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV), two versions of the Antisocial Processes Screening Device (APSD), and a Psychopathy Content scale on the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI). We found that PCLY:YV scores were significantly correlated with violent offense history, unadjudicated violence, and institutional violence, as well as measures of the severity and instrumentality of prior violence. Receiver operating characteristic analyses generated statistically significant effect sizes (AUC values) ranging from 0.64 to 0.79. The three other measures generated statistically significant correlations with one or more of the violence criteria, although correlations and effect sizes tended to be smaller in magnitude. Our results offer some support for the validity of these measures of psychopathic features, and the value of the PCL:YV in particular, with respect to short-term measures of violence outcome among juvenile offenders.
Childhood predictors of adult psychopathy scores among males followed from age 6 to 33
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2017
Psychopathic traits are associated with multiple negative outcomes. The present prospective, longitudinal study identified associations of childhood factors with adult psychopathy scores. Methods: 311 men, aged, on average, 33 years, were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Predictors included neighbourhood deprivation, parents' characteristics, teacher ratings of behaviour at ages 6, 10 and 12, and academic performance at age 12. Hierarchical linear regression models were computed to identify predictors at different ages of PCL-R total and facet scores. Results: Age 33 PCL-R total and facet scores were significantly, and independently, associated with father's and mother's criminality and mother's age at participant's birth when teacher ratings of childhood behaviours and mathematics marks were included in the models. Anxiety was negatively associated with facet 1 scores at age 6. At age 12, 22% of the variance in facet 2 scores was predicted by father's violent convictions, mother's age and criminal charges, and reactive aggression. Facet 3 scores were associated with mother's age (marginally), inattention, and reactive aggression. Facet 4 scores were associated with father's violent criminality, mother's age, conduct problems, inattention, and reactive aggression. Conclusion: Etiological research and prevention programs should focus on antecedents of psychopathic traits present in early childhood.