Cross-National Differences in the Assessment of Psychopathy: Do They Reflect Variations in Raters' Perceptions of Symptoms?

The Influence of Psychopathy on Incarcerated Inmates’ Cognitive Empathy

(1) Background: there is an ongoing debate about whether psychopathic traits increase or decrease cognitive empathy/Theory of Mind. (2) Methods: using a representative sample of 204 Spanish convicted inmates incarcerated at the Pereiro de Aguiar Penitentiary in Ourense, Spain, we investigated the relationship between two tools for the assessment of psychopathy, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP), and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), a well-known measure of cognitive empathy. (3) Results: The results showed no clear connection between the scores on the psychopathy assessment tools and RMET performance. This lack of association was stronger when the age variable was included in the multivariate analysis. (4) Conclusions: the results of this study failed to detect any clear link between psychopathy and cognitive empathy performance. Accordingly, our results indicate that psychopathy neither improves nor worsens cognitive empathy.

Variants of psychopathic personality in Korean and UK incarcerated offenders: Using latent profile analysis and discriminant analysis

Since the popularization of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), research on the construct of psychopathy has drastically increased. However, there has been little research examining the extent to which psychopathy varies across different cultures. This study is the first to use latent profile analysis to examine cultural variations in psychopathic traits between large samples of male inmates in Korean (n = 1102) and UK (n = 1316) prisons. Supplementary discriminate analysis was also used to validate the classification profiles and determine which items of the PCL-R were most important in defining the differences or similarities between each of the classes in the two large samples. Based on the analysis, two variants of primary psychopathy could be distinguished in the Korean sample but not in the UK sample. Conversely, only secondary psychopathy was identified in the UK sample. This result was also confirmed by supplementary analysis, which verified classification accuracy and also provided structure matrixes listing the correlations between each PCL-R item and the two discriminant functions. Our results point to the possibility of cultural differences in the structure of psychopathy and provide practical implications for clinical assessment and diagnosis.

Balancing the brain of offenders with psychopathy? Resting state EEG and electrodermal activity after a pilot study of brain self-regulation training

Although investigation of the brains of criminals began quite early in the history of psychophysiological research, little is known about brain plasticity of offenders with psychopathy. Building on our preliminary study reporting successful brain self-regulation using slow cortical potential (SCP) neurofeedback in offenders with psychopathy, we investigated the central nervous and autonomic peripheral changes occurring after brain self-regulation in a group of severe male offenders with psychopathy. Regarding the central nervous system, an overall suppression of the psychopathic overrepresentation of slow frequency bands was found, such as delta and theta band activity, after EEG neurofeedback. In addition, an increase in alpha band activity could be observed after the SCP self-regulation training. Electrodermal activity adaptively changed according to the regulation task, and this flexibility improved over training time. The results of this study point towards a constructive learning process and plasticity in neural and peripheral measures of offenders with psychopathy.

Novel validity evidence of the Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R) in a representative sample of Spanish inmates

Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) validation studies have been conducted mainly in non representative samples of North American adult male serious offenders. Research in other samples is needed to test the generalizability of PCL-R construct validity. PCL-R psychometric properties and construct validity were evaluated in a representative sample of 204 Spanish sentenced inmates. These inmates had served at least 6 months of their sentence at Pereiro de Aguiar prison. This sample was heterogeneous with respect to type of official charges and was representative, as all offenders who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were invited to participate. Classical test theory indexes of reliability, correlations between PCL-R items, factors and facets, external correlations, and factor structure analysis demonstrated that PCL-R affective, interpersonal and lifestyle dimensions were more reliable and valid for the psychopathy than the antisocial construct in this Southern European sample.

Development and Validation of the Chinese Triarchic Psychopathy Measure

The nature of psychopathy is not well understood in East Asian cultures, partially due to a lack of an established measurement of this important construct. This study developed and validated a Chinese-language version of the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) based on Patrick et al.'s (2009) triarchic model of psychopathy. Study 1 described the translation of the Chinese TriPM and demonstrated that the Chinese version of the TriPM is equivalent to the original English version in linguistic meaning. Study 2 examined the construct validity of the Chinese TriPM in a Chinese student sample. The TriPM evinced acceptable reliability and promising validity. Moreover, cross-cultural equivalence was examined by relative associations for the TriPM with the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale across the Chinese sample and a comparable United States student sample. Results revealed that the test bias in the strength of associations, regression intercepts, and slopes was mostly absent across the two samples.

Evaluating the Construct Validity of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale in China

The Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy (LSRP) scale is an efficient measure of psychopathy with promising psychometric properties. However, the cross-cultural utility of the LSRP has not been well documented, and no study has explored measurement invariance of the LSRP across East Asian and North American samples. We translated the LSRP into Chinese (Study 1) and investigated the validity and reliability of the Chinese LSRP using a sample of 226 university students in China (Study 2). Confirmatory factor analyses supported Brinkley, Diamond, Magaletta, and Heigel’s (2008) three-factor model (Egocentricity, Callousness, and Antisocial). Evidence for configural and partial metric (but not scalar) invariance of the factor structure was observed when comparing Chinese and U.S. university samples. However, response thresholds were significantly different between the two samples. The Chinese LSRP scores also demonstrated encouraging convergent and discriminate validity in terms of their associations with external criteria. We discuss the implications for cross-cultural assessment of psychopathy.

Corporate psychopathy: deviant workplace behaviour and toxic leaders (part two)

Purpose

– Increasingly, it is recognized that (larger) organizations have many employees who present with corporate psychopathy (i.e. a milder version of anti-social personality disorder). Importantly, such a disorder contributes to the presence of deviant workplace behavior. Organizations must therefore adapt its practices to both identify and manage employees who either present with, or have tendencies toward, corporate psychopathy. As a means of developing a guiding framework for organizational adaptation, this two part paper offers two reviews of relevant research. The first revolves around the body of knowledge regarding corporate psychopathy and the primary, established behavioral method of identifying its presence; the second is a brief review on physiological measures that can complement current gold standards. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

– A range of published empirical and practitioner research articles were reviewed to first, elaborate on anti-social personality disorder and corporate psychopathy; second, showcase the efficacy of the currently most accepted method of detecting psychopathic behavior – the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL); and third, highlight physiological methods of detecting psychopathic tendencies which may complement usage of the PCL – electroencephalography, measurement of galvanic skin responses, and electromyography.

Findings

– First, deviant workplace behaviors cause losses of billions of dollars across all business organizations, and much of this behavior stems from corporate psychopaths in positions of leadership. Second, the PCL, while useful, can nonetheless yield sharp differences in the identification of psychopathy across different administrators of the test. Third, measures of physiological states show good reliability in discriminating psychopathic persons from non-psychopathic persons. Based on these findings, the authors propose guidelines for how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

Research limitations/implications

– The proposed guidelines must be tested in an empirical paper to measure their effectiveness.

Practical implications

– The paper suggests an overall framework that may help leaders and organizational development practitioners identify the major factors which may be considered to safeguard against the potentially detrimental conduct of corporate psychopaths in their organizations.

Social implications

– This paper highlights the need to identify and ward against the presence of corporate psychopaths. There needs to be guidelines for organizations on how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

Originality/value

– The suggestion of integrating physiological methods of detection with the PCL, as well as urging pro-active education of all employees as the symptoms and effects of corporate psychopathy, is the novel contribution of the paper.

Corporate psychopathy: deviant workplace behaviour and toxic leaders – part one

Purpose

– Increasingly, it is recognized that (larger) organizations have many employees who present with corporate psychopathy (i.e. a milder version of antisocial personality disorder (APD)). Importantly, such a disorder contributes to the presence of deviant workplace behaviour. Organizations must therefore adapt its practices to both identify and manage employees who either present with, or have tendencies towards, corporate psychopathy. As a means of developing a guiding framework for organizational adaptation, the purpose of this two-part paper is to offer two reviews of relevant research. The first revolves around the body of knowledge regarding corporate psychopathy and the primary, established behavioural method of identifying its presence; the second is a brief review on physiological measures that can complement current gold standards.

Design/methodology/approach

– A range of published empirical and practitioner research articles were reviewed to elaborate on APD and corporate psychopathy; showcase the efficacy of the currently most accepted method of detecting psychopathic behaviour – the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) and; highlight physiological methods of detecting psychopathic tendencies which may complement usage of the PCL – electroencephalography, measurement of galvanic skin responses, and electromyography.

Findings

– Deviant workplace behaviours cause losses of billions of dollars across all business organizations, and much of this behaviour stems from corporate psychopaths in positions of leadership; the PCL, while useful, can nonetheless yield sharp differences in the identification of psychopathy across different administrators of the test; measures of physiological states show good reliability in discriminating psychopathic persons from non-psychopathic persons. Based on these findings, the authors propose guidelines for how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

Research limitations/implications

– The proposed guidelines must be tested in an empirical paper to measure their effectiveness.

Practical implications

– The paper suggests an overall framework that may help leaders and organizational development practitioners identify the major factors which may be considered to safeguard against the potentially detrimental conduct of corporate psychopaths in their organizations.

Social implications

– This paper highlights the need to identify and ward against the presence of corporate psychopaths. There needs to be guidelines for organizations on how to identify and mitigate the effects of corporate psychopathy for organizations.

Originality/value

– The suggestion of integrating physiological methods of detection with the PCL, as well as urging proactive education of all employees as the symptoms and effects of corporate psychopathy, is the novel contribution of the paper.

Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy as a function of interpersonal and affective disturbances

The diminished fear reactivity is one of the most valid physiological findings in psychopathy research. In a fear conditioning paradigm, with faces as conditioned stimulus (CS) and electric shock as unconditioned stimulus (US), we investigated a sample of 14 high psychopathic violent offenders. Event related potentials, skin conductance responses (SCR) as well as subjective ratings of the CSs were collected. This study assessed to which extent the different facets of the psychopathy construct contribute to the fear conditioning deficits observed in psychopaths. Participants with high scores on the affective facet subscale of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) showed weaker conditioned fear responses and lower N100 amplitudes compared to low scorers. In contrast, high scorers on the affective facet rated the CS+ (paired) more negatively than low scorers regarding the CS- (unpaired). Regarding the P300, high scores on the interpersonal facet were associated with increased amplitudes to the CS+ compared to the CS-, while the opposed pattern was found for the antisocial facet. Both, the initial and terminal contingent negative variation indicated a divergent pattern: participants with pronounced interpersonal deficits, showed increased cortical negativity to the CS+ compared to the CS-, whereas a reversed CS+/CS- differentiation was found in offenders scoring high on the antisocial facet. The present study revealed that deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy was most pronounced in offenders with high scores on the affective facet. Event related potentials suggest that participants with distinct interpersonal deficits showed increased information processing, whereas the antisocial facet was linked to decreased attention and interest to the CS+. These data indicate that an approach to the facets of psychopathy can help to resolve ambiguous findings in psychopathy research and enables a more precise and useful description of this disorder.

Assessing measurement invariance of PCL-R assessments from file reviews of North American and German offenders

Cross-cultural research on psychopathy necessitates assessment methods that are generalizable across linguistic and cultural differences. Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare the factorial structure of Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) assessments obtained from file reviews of North-American (N=2622) and German (N=443) male offenders. The analyses indicated that the 18 item, 4-factor model of the PCL-R obtained with the standard PCL-R protocol (interview and file review) also holds for file review data. On a factor-by-factor level, the data are commensurate with strong factorial invariance of factor loadings and item thresholds for the Interpersonal and Lifestyle factors, and with likely metric invariance for the Affective factor. The Antisocial factor showed structural differences between the two samples. The results imply that cultural or environmental factors more strongly influence the judgment and/or expression of antisociality. Based on the results, cross-cultural comparisons between North-American and German offenders in terms of PCL-R psychopathy should be limited to the Interpersonal and Lifestyle factors. Further research using data obtained through the standard protocol (i.e., interview plus file information) is encouraged.

Aberrant social and cerebral responding in a competitive reaction time paradigm in criminal psychopaths

In a previous study (Lotze et al., 2007) we described dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activation in healthy subjects during retaliation in a competitive reaction time task. Interestingly, the less callous the subjects were, the more they responded with ventral mPFC-activation when watching the opponent suffering. In this study we used this paradigm to investigate behavioral and neural responding of ten criminal psychopathic individuals from a forensic psychiatric institution. In contrast to healthy subjects, who show reactive aggressive behavior of inflicting punishment with increasing intensity after experiencing an increasing amount of punishment from a yoked opponent, psychopathic participants did not react with comparable retaliation. However, when psychopaths punished with a high amount they showed increased activation in the hypothalamus, the lateral prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala. The trait "physical aggression" showed a positive correlation with hypothalamic activation. Medial prefrontal areas, associated with emotional control and conflict management in healthy subjects performing this paradigm, were inactive in psychopathic subjects during retaliation. When psychopaths observed the yoked opponent being punished they showed increased activation in the dorsal and ventral medial prefrontal cortex, which was positively associated by impulsivity and antisocial behavior of Hare's psychopathy construct. This finding supports the notion that reactive aggression is more related to antisocial behavior and anger management than with emotional and interpersonal characteristics of psychopathy and suggests that two separate brain activation patterns seem to account for these two behavioral dispositions.

Antisocial process screening device: validation on a Russian sample of juvenile delinquents with the emphasis on the role of personality and parental rearing

The objectives of the present study were 1) to validate the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD) in a sample of Russian juvenile delinquents; 2) to examine subgroups of delinquents with higher versus lower levels of childhood problem behaviors with respect to the APSD subscales, personality traits, and parental rearing; and 3) to attempt to replicate the previous finding that the APSD subscale measuring callous/unemotional traits can differentiate subgroups of delinquents with different precursors for problem behaviors (predominantly biological versus predominantly social). A group of 250 Russian juvenile inmates (mean age=16.4) was examined by means of the APSD completed by the staff at the correctional institution. The inmates completed several self-reports assessing their current and childhood behavior problems, personality traits and experienced parental rearing practices. A factor structure of the APSD was obtained that is similar, albeit not identical, to that from the original studies by Frick and colleagues [Frick, P.J., O'Brien, B.S., Wootton, J.M., McBurnett, K., (1994). Psychopathy and conduct problems in children. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103, 700-707]; [Frick, P.J., Barry, C.T., Bodin, S.D., (1999). Applying the concept of psychopathy to children: Implications for the Assessment of antisocial youth. In Gacono, C.B. (Ed), The clinical and forensic assessment of psychopathy: A practitioners guide. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum]; [Frick, P.J., Lilienfeld, S.O., Ellis, M., Loney, B., Silverthorn, P., (1999). The association between anxiety and psychopathy dimensions in children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 27, 383-392]; callous unemotional traits in the present sample were expressed in manipulative behavior. Results further disclosed higher levels of antisocial and aggressive activities, higher levels of personality attributes such as narcissism and novelty seeking, as well as lower cooperativeness, and negatively perceived parental rearing in a subgroup with higher (versus lower) number of childhood symptoms of conduct disorder and oppositional disorder. The juvenile delinquents with higher levels as compared to lower levels of callous unemotional traits also perceived their parents as using more negative rearing strategies. The findings are discussed in terms of interactional processes between personality of the juvenile delinquents and parental rearing in the development of antisocial behavior.

Predictive validity of the Dutch PCL:YV for institutional disruptive behavior: findings from two samples of male adolescents in a juvenile justice treatment institution

The present prospective study examined the predictive validity of the Dutch version of the Psychopathy Check List: Youth Version for disruptive behavior in male adolescents during treatment. The study comprised two samples admitted to different secure treatment institutions in The Netherlands, Jongerenhuis Harreveld (n = 81) and Rentray (n = 66). Overall, the results demonstrate that psychopathy is a significant predictor of institutional disruptive behavior, and physical violence in particular. Furthermore, Hare's traditional Factor 2 was more strongly related to disruptive incidents than Factor 1. By using the recently proposed three- and four-factor models of psychopathy, insight into the pattern of associations between psychopathy dimensions and different types of disruptive behavior was obtained. The antisocial dimension of psychopathy appeared to be more strongly related to severe incidents than the lifestyle dimension. Regression analyses identified significant contributions of the antisocial and lifestyle dimensions to the prediction of incidents. The relatively small degree of variance explained underlines the importance of other risk factors to identify adolescents at risk of disruptive behavior during institutional treatment.

Psychopathy: theory, measurement, and treatment

The purpose of this article is to link empirical literature to the theoretical background of the concept of psychopathy and the impact that this has had on the development of treatment and intervention procedures for psychopathic offenders. This article begins with a discussion of the different theories of psychopathy, which leads into considerations of different developmental pathways of psychopathy in the individual. The discussion will then lead on to the psychometrics and measurement tools used to assess psychopathy in the individual. The measurement section will primarily be focused on Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), as this is the most frequently used and validated measure of psychopathy. The relationship between psychopathy and different types of crime is also discussed. The final section of the article considers the treatment and interventions that are available to psychopathic offenders and the implications this has for future research.