Primary Psychopath Research Articles

Primary and Secondary Psychopathic Traits and Unethical Decision Making: Mediating Effect of Moral Emotions and Moral Disengagement

본 연구는 1차성 정신병질과 2차성 정신병질이 상호 이질적인 장애임을 제언하는 선행연구 결과들을 근거로, 비윤리적 행동에 이르는 1차성 정신병질과 2차성 정신병질의 심리적 과정을 이해하는 것을 목적으로 하였다. 이를 위해 남녀 대학생 647명을 대상으로 자기보고식 정신병질 질문지(LSRP) 및 한국판 성인용 도덕적 이탈 척도, 도덕적 정서 시나리오 척도, 비윤리적 의사결정 척도를 실시하였다. 1, 2차성 정신병질 특성과 비윤리적 의사결정 간의 관계에 도덕적 정서와 도덕적 이탈이 매개하는 연구모형의 적합도를 검증하고, 이들 간의 직․간접효과를 확인하였다. 그 결과, 비윤리적 의사결정에 대한 1차성 정신병질 특성의 직접효과가 확인되었다. 또한, 1차성 정신병질 특성과 비윤리적 의사결정 간의 관계에 도덕적 정서와 도덕적 이탈의 간접효과가 확인되었다. 2차성 정신병질 특성과 비윤리적 의사결정 간의 관계에서는 도덕적 이탈의 완전매개 효과가 확인되었다. 마지막으로, 본 연구가 갖는 임상적 함의 및 제한점에 대해 논의하고 후속 연구의 방향을 제언하였다.

Values of People with Primary and Secondary Psychopathic Tendency: Focused on Schwartz’s Value Theory

This study attempted to determine difference between primary psychopath and secondary psychopath in terms of their values. After organizing three different groups with the help of the LSRP(Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale): a primary psychopathic tendency group, a secondary psychopathic tendency group, and a normal control group, the authors compared and analyzed values of these three groups, which were measured using the PVQ-R(Portrait Values Questionnaire-Revised). Based on the results, the value priorities of the two psychopathic tendency groups were heavily inclined towards the values of personal focus. In particular, the two groups showed the tendency to highly value the higher order value of self-enhancement but less value the higher value of self-transcendence. In addition, self-enhancement and self-transcendence were the higher order values which clearly differentiated the primary psychopathic tendency group and secondary psychopathic tendency group. In particular, the values of achievement, power-dominance, power-resources, and universalism-concern most clearly differentiate the two groups from each other. In addition, among the higher values of openness to change and conservation, both primary and secondary psychopathic tendency groups surpassed the normal control group in terms of the values of hedonism and face. On the other hand, the normal control group surpassed the primary and secondary psychopathic tendency groups in terms of the values of humility and conformity-rules.

Identifying Psychopathic Subtypes: Combining an Empirical Personality Classification of Offenders WithThe Psychopathy Checklist-Revised

Mentally disordered offenders who were psychopathic according to the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) were divided into primary psychopath, secondary psychopath, controlled, and inhibited groups on the basis of a validated empirical classification, using the Antisocial Personality Questionnaire (APQ). They were compared on the factors and facets of the PCL-R, criminal history, Axis I and Axis II psychopathology, experience of child abuse, personality, interpersonal style, and clinical ratings of risk and treatability, to determine the utility of the APQ classification in identifying subtypes of psychopath. Significant differences between APQ primary and secondary psychopaths on several measures support the identification of these groups with the primary and secondary psychopaths hypothesized by Karpman (1948) and others. However, further differences suggest that the controlled and inhibited groups represent additional variants of primary and secondary psychopath, respectively. The results provide further evidence for the heterogeneity of psychopaths, and suggest that the PCL-R encompasses several distinct subtypes of abnormal personality.

MACHIAVELLIANISM AND PSYCHOPATHY: AN EAST-WEST NOTE

Western theory and research has found a positive relationship between the Machiavellian personality (Mach) and the Primary Psychopath (PP). Joint symptoms include affective poverty, lack of remorse/guilt, and manipulativeness. We explored the Mach-PP relationship in a culture which changed radically after 1990 from socialism to capitalism.

The antisocial personalities

This volume presents a scholarly analysis of psychopathic and sociopathic personalities and the conditions that give rise to them. In so doing, it offers a coherent theoretical and developmental analysis of socialization and its vicissitudes, and of the role played in socialization by the crime-relevant genetic traits of the child and the skills and limitations of the primary socializing agents, the parents. This volume also describes how American psychiatry's (DSM-IV) category of Antisocial Personality Disorder is heterogeneous and fails to document some of the more interesting and notorious psychopaths of our era. The author also shows why the antinomic formula Nature vs. Nurture should be revised to Nature via Nurture and reviews the evidence for the heritability of crime-relevant traits. One of these traits -- fearlessness -- seems to be one basis for the primary psychopathy and the author argues that the primary psychopath and the hero may be twigs on the same genetic branch. But crime -- the failure of socialization -- is rare among traditional peoples still living in the extended-family environment in which our common ancestors lived and to which our species is evolutionarily adapted. The author demonstrates that the sharp rise in crime and violence in the United States since the 1960s can be attributed to the coeval increase in divorce and illegitimacy which has left millions of fatherless children to be reared by over-burdened, often immature or sociopathic single mothers. The genus sociopathic personality includes those persons whose failure of socialization can be attributed largely to incompetent or indifferent rearing. Two generalizations supported by modern behavior genetic research are that most psychological traits have strong genetic roots and show little lasting influence of the rearing environment. This book demonstrates that the important trait of socialization is an exception. Although traits that obstruct or facilitate socialization tend to obey these rules, socialization itself is only weakly heritable; this is because modern American society displays such enormous variance in the relevant environmental factors, mainly in parental competence. Moreover, parental incompetence that produces sociopathy in one child is likely to have the same result with any siblings. This book argues that sociopathy contributes far more to crime and violence than psychopathy because sociopaths are much more numerous and because sociopathy is a familial trait for both genetic and environmental reasons. With a provocative thesis and an engaging style, this book will be of principal interest to clinical, personality, forensic, and developmental psychologists and their students, as well as to psychiatrists and criminologists.

Replicated Personality Disorder Clusters among Mentally Disordered Offenders and their Relation to Dimensions of Personality

Cluster analysis of personality profiles of mentally disordered offenders on the SHAPS (Special Hospitals Assessment of Personality and Socialisation) replicated clusters of primary psychopath, secondary psychopath, controlled, and inhibited personalities found in previous research. These groups produced distinctive profiles on the personality disorder scales of the MCMI (Millón Clinical Multiaxial Inventory). Independent clustering of MCMI profiles yielded five clusters, four of which correspond to the SHAPS groups. Replication of these four profile types reflects the influence of neuroticism and extraversion, which pervade both inventories, but canonical analysis indicated that the shared dimensions did not align with these factors. The common dimensions discriminating the personality disorder clusters were mainly social withdrawal or maladjusted introversion, impulsivity or maladjusted extraversion, and dependency.

Personality disorder in an outpatient offender population

Previous research with incarcerated and hospitalised offenders has produced a fourfold typology of personality types. These have been labelled primary psychopath, secondary psychopath, inhibited and controlled. The current study uses cluster analysis of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) scores to determine whether the same clusters emerge in a sample of non‐incarcerated offenders. Results indicate the presence of the four types in this population. Consideration is given to how the clusters vary with respect to index offence and other variables.

PATTERNS OF PERSONALITY DEVIATION AMONG VIOLENT OFFENDERS

Two cluster analytic procedures were applied to personality test data obtained from 300 violent offenders. The analyses produced four broadly similar profile patterns which replicate those found in previous studies of violent offenders. The four patterns were labelled Primary Psychopath, Secondary Psychopath, Controlled and Inhibited. Two factor dimensions of Psychopathy or Antisocial Aggression and Social Withdrawal were sufficient to reproduce the typology. Two further profile patterns were identified, but these were variants or subgroups of the secondary psychopath and controlled profile patterns. The primary and secondary psychopath patterns predominate among those identified as having personality disorders, while controlled and inhibited patterns were more likely to be associated with more serious psychiatric disability.

Psychopathy: A psychobiological perspective

Abstract After critically examining the concept of psychopathy and reviewing the major existing theories of psychopathy in the light of a psychobiological conception of abnormal behaviour (Ohman, 1981), this paper attempts to present an integrated, psychobiological model of psychopathy. Essentially this analyses psychopathy in terms of the predisposing influences, the triggering environmental events which initiate psychopathic behaviour, and the neurophsychological mechanisms which mediate it. It is suggested that individuals who show chronic antisocial behaviour, conforming to the North American term ‘sociopath’, may demonstrate a maturational deficit but do not necessarily show a psychopathic personality disorder. The latter is said to be characterised, at a personality trait level, by high Impulsiveness and Psychopathy (Blackburn, 1982 a, b), reflecting interactive deficits in goal direction and affect. At a dynamic (state) level, a psychopathic personality disorder is said to be characterised by a lack of coping, reflecting either, in the case of the secondary psychopath, a deficit in primary appraisal, (over-perception of threat), or in the case of the primary psychopath, a deficit in secondary appraisal (low perceived control over aversive environmental events). It is further suggested that a genetic predisposition to social withdrawal and exposure to an uncontrollably aversive early environment may interact to predispose an individual to develop a psychopathic personality disorder in adulthood.