Abstract
Purpose Research has consistently revealed that measures of psychopathy and psychopathic personality traits represent some of the most consistent predictors of violent criminal involvement. As a result, there has been a considerable amount of interest in trying to identify the various etiological factors related to psychopathy. The current study builds on this existing body of literature by examining the genetic foundations to psychopathic personality traits. Methods An adoption-based research design is used to estimate genetic effects on psychopathic personality traits. Adoptees are drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Results Analyses revealed that having a biological criminal father was related to psychopathic personality traits for male adoptees, but not for female adoptees. For males, having a criminal biological father increased the odds of scoring in the extreme of the psychopathic personality trait scale by a factor ranging between 4.3 and 8.5. However, there was no association between having a biological criminal mother and psychopathic personality traits for adoptees. Conclusions Psychopathic personality traits are transmitted from father-to-offspring due to genetic reasons.
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