Role Of Psychopathic Traits Research Articles

Youth Gang Involvement and Long-Term Offending: An Examination into the Role of Psychopathic Traits

Most policies to combat gang criminal behavior are rooted in deterrence and punitive strategies. This is fueled by moral panic, a get tough on crime rhetoric, and a lack of understanding for the psychological factors that may influence this behavior. Further, the extant literature has consistently observed that gang membership is associated with increased criminal behavior. In an effort to promote and shift away from punitive approaches in response to gang delinquency, the current study investigates the role psychopathic traits have in violent and property offending, longitudinally, in a sample of gang-involved youth. The study implemented count mixed effect models to investigate the topic longitudinally in waves 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, while controlling for other variables with violent and property offending frequency. The current study found that some psychopathic traits are associated with offending behavior, longitudinally, in gang members and youth with a history of gang involvement. The findings suggest that gang intervention strategies should include empirically supported programs for treating psychopathic traits in gang identified youth to reduce involvement in delinquent behavior. Further, practitioners, researchers, and policymakers should collaborate to develop more empirically supported strategies to reduce and prevent gang delinquent behavior from an empathetic lens.

The Role of Psychopathic Traits and Supportive Parental Practices in Long-Term Juvenile Recidivism: a 10-Year Follow-Up

Recidivism rates of juvenile delinquents remain high despite numerous intervention efforts. Identifying factors that can predict (long-term) recidivism is therefore an important research issue. Knowledge on why juveniles re-offend is a key to effective interventions as it helps to identify factors most likely to be successful targets in intervention programs. A 10-year follow-up study prospectively examined whether psychopathic traits and supportive parental practices predicted the timing and frequency of recidivism in juvenile delinquents. Participants were 256 adolescents who were referred to treatment for serious antisocial behavior (72.4% male). Participants were between 12 and 18 years old at baseline (M = 15.9 years). Parents reported on juveniles’ psychopathic traits and supportive parental practices at baseline. At 10-year follow-up, the official recidivism data were collected. A substantial number of juveniles (86.3%) had recidivated at 10-year follow-up. Juvenile psychopathic traits and supportive parental practices did not incrementally predict the timing or frequency of recidivism over time over and beyond the static control variables gender and prior offenses. The present study confirms previous work suggesting that static risk factors gender and prior offenses are strongest predictors of recidivism.

Trauma, Psychopathic Traits, and Resilience in Female Post-Prison Reentry Outcomes

A growing body of research has examined female psychopathy, yet gaps remain. Recent research has explored links between early trauma, psychopathic traits, and behavioral outcomes. Utilizing data collected as part of the evaluation of the Seattle Women’s Reentry (SWR) Initiative, this study investigates the relationship between early trauma and psychopathic traits in female post-prison reentry outcomes. The role of psychopathic traits as a protective resilience factor that moderates early trauma for women leaving prison and reentering the community is explored. Background information, survey data, and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) scores are analyzed in relation to recidivism three-years post release for 85 women released from the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) in Washington State. Results indicated that the majority of the women in the study have early trauma backgrounds, PCL-R scores predict recidivism while trauma did not, and PCL-R scores did not moderate the relationship between trauma and recidivism. Results also found that PCL-R scores were associated with higher levels of self-esteem. Findings are consistent with prior research showing a link between psychopathic traits and recidivism but do not offer support for psychopathic traits as a moderating resilience protective factor between trauma and recidivism.

The role of psychopathic traits and developmental risk factors on offending trajectories from early adolescence to adulthood: A prospective study of incarcerated youth

Purpose: Criminal career research has recently identified 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 is 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-shaped adolescent limited 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, and 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 trajectories. Conclusions: More research is needed to more fully integrate the construct of psychopathy into criminal career research.

Psychopathic Traits in Childhood: Insights from Parental Warmth and Fearless Temperament via Conscience Development.

The role of psychopathic traits in predicting more serious and persistent patterns of child conduct problems has been well documented. The jointly presence of interpersonal (grandiose–deceitful), affective (e.g., callous–unemotional), and behavioral psychopathic traits (impulsive–need of stimulation) identifies a group of children at increased risk of psychosocial maladjustment. The present study aims to disentangle the underlying mechanisms by examining how early parenting (i.e., warmth) and child temperament (i.e., fearlessness) predict later psychopathic traits, via conscience development (CD). Data were collected in a large sample of children (n = 2.266; 48.5% girls), aged 3 to 6 at the onset of the study (Mage = 4.25; SD = 0.91), who were followed up one and two years later. The results showed direct effects from fearlessness to interpersonal and behavioral psychopathic traits. Parental warmth, fearless temperament, and their interaction, predicted CD, which, in turn, showed a negative effect on psychopathic traits. The indirect effects indicated significant negative mediation effects of warmth through CD on psychopathic traits, which seem to be stronger when children present lower levels of fearlessness. Overall, these results contribute to better understand the development of child psychopathic traits and provide additional insight on effective strategies that will help to restrain the potential development of a high-risk profile in early childhood.

An antisocial alchemy: Psychopathic traits as a moderator of the different forms and functions of aggression in delinquency and conduct disorder among youth

The aim of the present study is to examine the possible role of psychopathic traits as a moderator of the aggression-antisociality/delinquency link. Our sample was composed of 567 youth (M = 15.91 years, SD = 0.99 years, age range = 14–18 years) from Portugal. Results indicated that psychopathic features significantly moderate four different forms and functions of aggression – proactive overt, proactive relational, reactive overt, and reactive relational – when predicting delinquency. However, psychopathic traits only significantly moderate proactive relational aggression when predicting Conduct Disorder. Psychopathic traits and aggression constitute an antisocial alchemy for antisocial behavior but more research is needed about moderation effects therein particularly among clinical and justice system involved samples of youth to inform behavioral interventions.

The role of psychopathic traits, social anxiety and cortisol in social approach avoidance tendencies

Social anxiety and psychopathy have conceptually been linked to nearly opposite emotional, behavioral and endocrinological endophenotypes, representing social fearfulness and fearlessness, respectively. Although such a dimensional view has theoretical and practical implications, no study has directly compared social anxiety and psychopathy in terms of emotional experiences, relevant hormones (i.e. cortisol, testosterone) and behavioral tendencies (i.e. social approach-avoidance). Therefore, the present study examined 1) whether self-reported social anxiety and psychopathic traits are indeed anticorrelated, and 2) whether social anxiety, psychopathic traits, cortisol, testosterone and their interplay are differentially linked to social approach-avoidance tendencies. In a well-powered study, a sample of 196 healthy female participants, we assessed self-reported emotional and behavioral tendencies of social fear (i.e. social anxiety and social avoidance) and psychopathic traits (i.e. Factor I [interpersonal-affective deficit] and Factor II [impulsive behavior]). Furthermore, hormone levels were assessed, and approach-avoidance tendencies towards emotional (angry, happy) facial expressions were measured by means of a joystick reaction time task. Results confirmed that self-reported emotional tendencies of social anxiety and psychopathy Factor I (interpersonal-affective deficit) correlated negatively, but self-reported behavioral tendencies (social avoidance and psychopathy Factor II [impulsive behavior]) correlated positively. Furthermore, Structural Equation Modelling demonstrated that participants with higher social anxiety and higher cortisol levels showed an avoidance tendency towards happy faces, while participants with higher psychopathic traits showed an approach tendency towards angry faces. In sum, the notion that social anxiety and psychopathic traits are opposing ends of one dimension was supported only in terms of self-reported emotional experiences, but a comparable relationship with regard to behavioral and endocrinological aspects is debatable. The current findings stress the necessity to study emotional, endocrinological and behavioral factors in unison in order to better understand the shared and distinctive mechanisms of social anxiety and psychopathic traits.

The Role of Psychopathic Traits in Explaining Associations Between Childhood Traumatic Experiences and Aggression.

The present study reports on a preregistered investigation of the potential mediating role of the triarchic psychopathy components Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition for associations between childhood traumatic experiences (CTE) and aggression. Three nonclinical samples (total N = 1,729; 1,176 women, 68.02%) completed self-report instruments of CTE, triarchic psychopathy traits, reactive and proactive aggression (Samples 1 and 2), and general aggression (Sample 3). Cross-sectional path analyses revealed that both Meanness and Disinhibition consistently mediated associations between CTE and aggression. These indirect effects were consistent across gender, even though the direct effect of Meanness on proactive aggression was stronger in men than in women (Samples 1 and 2). Finally, Boldness had weak negative associations with childhood traumatic experiences in all three samples, but no direct association with aggression. Taken together, these correlational findings suggest potential developmental mechanisms linking early traumatic experiences to adult aggression through elevated levels of psychopathic traits.

The role of psychopathic traits and moral disengagement in cyberbullying among adolescents.

The prevalence of cyberbullying suggests that about 15% of school-aged children are involved in some way, although estimates vary widely. Preventing and limiting the behaviour will require more understanding of how mutable variables relate to it. There is some evidence linking higher psychopathy scores to cyberbullying, but the cognitive processes involved in 'moral disengagement' may provide better candidates for intervention. To test the hypothesis that psychopathy scores and moral disengagement ratings would each be associated with cyberbullying, but that sex and age would moderate any associations. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 334 11 to 15-year-olds (162 girls, 172 boys) from two French schools. Participants completed a self-report questionnaire which measured cyberbullying, psychopathy traits and moral disengagement. We found a significant relationship between moral disengagement scale scores and cyberbullying ratings, but a stronger relationship between psychopathy scores and likelihood of cyberbullying. Neither sex nor age of the students affected these relationships. This study adds to existing knowledge in showing that enduring personal qualities, as captured by a self-rated psychopathy scale, may increase the risk of cyberbullying among adolescents. The findings suggest that teachers should be helped to monitor students' emotional and cognitive social skills and consider extra support for those who struggle to recognise or process others' distress.

Who is the Hooligan? The Role of Psychopathic Traits

ABSTRACT The current study aims to examine associations between distinct psychopathic traits with hooliganism, after controlling for the influence of levels of aggression. In addition, we aim to investigate potential associations between psychopathic traits and the likelihood of being involved in hooliganism as leaders or followers. Data were collected from 473 fans (Mage = 22.24, SD = 3.90) from five different Cypriot football teams who completed questionnaires assessing distinct dimensions of psychopathy, aggression, and hooliganism. Findings suggested that callous-unemotional traits was the stronger predictor of hooliganism and the only dimension of psychopathy associated with leadership and the likelihood of being arrested due to hooligan activities, after accounting for levels of aggression. In contrast, grandiose-manipulation was not associated with hooliganism. Individuals high on impulsive-irresponsibility were also likely to engage in hooliganism especially as followers. In addition to explaining the different roles hooligans have in organized activities, the current study provides evidence that callous-unemotional traits and impulsive-irresponsibility can be the basis for the development of interventions targeting hooliganism. The majority of prior work on hooliganism is sociological in nature, and current findings provide evidence for the importance of individual characteristics in explaining this adverse phenomenon.

Pupil reactivity to emotional faces among convicted violent offenders: The role of psychopathic traits.

Psychopathy is characteristically associated with impairments in recognizing others' facial expressions of emotion, and there is some evidence that these difficulties are specific to the callousness features of the disorder. However, it remains unclear whether these difficulties are accompanied by reductions in autonomic reactivity when viewing others' emotional expressions, and whether these impairments are particular to expressions showing another's distress or are more pervasive across different emotional expressions. In this study, 73 adult male prisoners with histories of serious sexual or violent offenses-who ranged across the psychopathy continuum-completed a facial emotion recognition task. For the first time in a convicted offender sample, we used pupillometry techniques to measure changes in the pupil dilation response, a measure of sympathetic autonomic arousal to affective stimuli. We found that the callousness features of psychopathy were related to impaired recognition of fearful faces. Strikingly, we also showed that increasing callousness was associated with a reduction in the pupil dilation response and that this was pervasive across different emotional expressions. Our results highlight a potential role of the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system in the pathophysiology of psychopathy and demonstrate the potential of the pupillary response as a technique for understanding attention-emotion interactions in psychopathy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

More than meets the eye: the role of psychopathic traits in attention to distress

ABSTRACTAlthough psychopathic traits have long been associated with predation and violence, it is unclear how individuals high in psychopathic traits choose victims. Victim selection and violence perpetration may be facilitated by attention to, or unawareness of, distressful facial expressions. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, the present study aimed to identify whether psychopathic traits are associated with unconscious attentional biases to expressions of distress. A sample of 138 undergraduates (23 males, 115 females, Mage = 20.4) viewed 80 paired images portraying a neutral, and authentic expression of either fear, pain, embarrassment, startle, or sadness. Psychopathic traits did not predict initial orientation to distressing over neutral expressions. However, callous-affective traits negatively predicted attentional maintenance to expressions of embarrassment and pain, whereas criminal tendencies and erratic lifestyle positively predicted attentional maintenance to embarrassment and pain, respectively. Findings offer insight into perceptual processing of others’ distress, with implications for violence and victim selection.

Supplemental Material for Pupil Reactivity to Emotional Faces Among Convicted Violent Offenders: The Role of Psychopathic Traits

Supplemental Material for Pupil Reactivity to Emotional Faces Among Convicted Violent Offenders: The Role of Psychopathic Traits

Emotional face recognition in male adolescents with autism spectrum disorder or disruptive behavior disorder: an eye-tracking study

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD) are often associated with emotion recognition difficulties. This is the first eye-tracking study to examine emotional face recognition (i.e., gazing behavior) in a direct comparison of male adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder, and typically developing (TD) individuals. We also investigate the role of psychopathic traits, callous–unemotional (CU) traits, and subtypes of aggressive behavior in emotional face recognition. A total of 122 male adolescents (N = 50 ASD, N = 44 ODD/CD, and N = 28 TD) aged 12–19 years (M = 15.4 years, SD= 1.9) were included in the current study for the eye-tracking experiment. Participants were presented with neutral and emotional faces using a Tobii 1750 eye-tracking monitor to record gaze behavior. Our main dependent eye-tracking variables were: (1) fixation duration to the eyes of a face and (2) time to the first fixation to the eyes. Since distributions of eye-tracking variables were not completely Gaussian, non-parametric tests were chosen to investigate gaze behavior across the diagnostic groups with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder, and Typically Developing individuals. Furthermore, we used Spearman correlations to investigate the links with psychopathy, callous, and unemotional traits and subtypes of aggression as assessed by questionnaires. The relative total fixation duration to the eyes was decreased in both the Autism Spectrum Disorder group and the Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder group for several emotional expressions. In both the Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Oppositional Defiant Disorder/Conduct Disorder group, increased time to first fixation on the eyes of fearful faces only was nominally significant. The time to first fixation on the eyes was nominally correlated with psychopathic traits and proactive aggression. The current findings do not support strong claims for differential cross-disorder eye-gazing deficits and for a role of shared underlying psychopathic traits, callous–unemotional traits, and aggression subtypes. Our data provide valuable and novel insights into gaze timing distributions when looking at the eyes of a fearful face.

Psychopathy and Victim Selection: Does Nonverbal Decoding or Empathy Impact Vulnerability Ratings?

This research examined the role of psychopathic traits in perceptions of victimization and vulnerability. Community-member participants viewed video clips of victims, nonvictims, and victims who studied self-defense, then rated them on vulnerability and perceived history of victimization. Participants were most proficient at identifying nonvictims as nonvictims. Victims who studied self-defense were harder to correctly identify than both victims and nonvictims and were rated by participants as less vulnerable and less likely to be victims than other victims and nonvictims. Moreover, individuals high in psychopathic traits, specifically Factor 2, were more likely than individuals low in psychopathic traits to correctly identify victims who practiced self-defense as victims, as well as nonvictims as victims. Unexpectedly, there was an observed negative relationship between facial affect decoding and identifying self-defense victims. The ability to correctly interpret facial expressions was found to partially mediate the relationship between psychopathy scores and the identification of self-defense victims. The results of this study provide insight into the ability of individuals with psychopathic traits to identify nonverbal cues associated with vulnerability. The results provide evidence that taking self-defense classes may be a meaningful intervention for victims, particularly.

Pain Processing in a Social Context and the Link with Psychopathic Personality Traits-An Event-Related Potential Study.

Empathy describes the ability to understand another person’s feelings. Psychopathy is a disorder that is characterized by a lack of empathy. Therefore, empathy and psychopathy are interesting traits to investigate with respect to experiencing and observing pain. The present study aimed to investigate pain empathy and pain sensitivity by measuring event-related potentials (ERPs) extracted from the ongoing EEG in an interactive setup. Each participant fulfilled subsequently the role of “villain” and “victim”. In addition, mode of control was modulated resulting in four different conditions; passive villain, active villain, active victim and passive victim. Response-, visual- and pain ERPs were compared between the four conditions. Furthermore, the role of psychopathic traits in these outcomes was investigated. Our findings suggested that people experience more conflict when hurting someone else than hurting themselves. Furthermore, our results indicated that self-controlled pain was experienced as more painful than uncontrolled pain. People that scored high on psychopathic traits seemed to process and experience pain differently. According to the results of the current study, social context, attention and personality traits seem to modulate pain processing and the empathic response to pain in self and others. The within-subject experimental design described here provides an excellent approach to further unravel the influence of social context and personality traits on social cognition.

The Development of Severe and Chronic Violence Among Youth: The Role of Psychopathic Traits and Reward Processing.

Psychopathic traits are a manifestation of a personality pathology that comprises a core affective-interpersonal dysfunction (callous-unemotional traits) and an impulsive-antisocial behavioral component. Of particular importance, psychopathic traits are associated with the perpetration of some of the most severe acts of violence, and they appear to indicate a subset of youth at risk for earlier onset, greater frequency, and persistence of violent offending. Although these youth represent a minority of the population, they commit a significant proportion of the violence in the general community. In our review, we highlight evidence of a unique neurobiological predisposition that underlies the core affective deficits and describe contemporary accounts for the developmental processes leading to the antisocial behavior associated with psychopathy. Current evidence suggests that, for this subset of youth, the structure and function of neural circuitry supporting emotion processing, reward learning, decision making, and the development of emotion related to empathy may be crucial to understanding why they are at risk for violence. In particular, a reward dominant pattern of neurobehavioral conditioning may explain how these youth progress to some of the most severe and persistent forms of violence. However, this pattern of conditioning may also be essential to the primary prevention of such deleterious behavior. We suspect that effective strategies to prevent such violence may ultimately be informed by understanding these affective and motivational mechanisms.

The Role of Psychopathic Traits in Female Sexual Coercion.

Researchers have consistently found a relationship between psychopathy and the use of sexual coercion in samples of males with and without previous sexual arrests (Abbey, Jacques-Tiura, & LeBreton, 2011; Hare, 1991; Hersh & Gray-Little, 1998; Seto & Lalumiere, 2000). Although there is growing recognition that females also engage in sexually coercive behavior, current understanding of female coercion is limited (Bouffard, Bouffard, & Miller, 2015; Cortoni, Hanson, & Coache, 2010; Muñoz, Khan, & Cordwell, 2011). This study examined the relationship between psychopathic traits and sexual coercion tactics among a sample of 558 undergraduate females. Results indicate that the use of any previous sexual coercion tactic (coax, lie, get drunk, and assault) and higher endorsement of primary psychopathy traits significantly predict whether the females state that they will engage in future sexually coercive behaviors.

The Role of Psychopathic Traits in the Development of the Therapeutic Alliance Among Sexual Offenders.

There is a growing body of research demonstrating that the therapeutic alliance (TA) affects outcomes among specialized forensic populations, including sexual offenders. Despite this consensus, researchers continue to question whether higher levels of psychopathic traits are conducive to the formation of a therapeutic relationship for high-risk sexual offenders. Thus, the current study adds to the literature by examining the relationship between the TA and levels of psychopathy among a sample of incarcerated sexual offenders participating in sexual offender treatment. Overall, we found no significant relationships between Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) scores and the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI) for either client or therapist ratings. However, when we excluded those offenders who were participating in aftercare, a significant negative relationship was found between client ratings of the Bonds subscale and PCL-R total scores. Next, after controlling for risk and group status (aftercare/non-aftercare), we found no significant differences between either client or therapist total WAI scores when compared by level of psychopathy as measured by the PCL-R (low, >20; moderate, 20-30; and high, >30). Furthermore, when Factor 1 and Factor 2 scores of the PCL-R were examined individually, neither factor significantly predicted either client or therapist total WAI score after controlling for risk and group status. Findings are discussed as they pertain to the treatment of sexual offenders with elevated levels of psychopathic traits.

Psychopathic traits mediate the association of serotonin transporter genotype and child externalizing behavior.

Although the promoter polymorphism of the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) gene is associated with externalizing behavior, its mediating pathways are unknown. Given their sensitivity to serotonin neurotransmission and unique association with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), we tested callous-unemotional (CU) traits and narcissism as separate mediators of the association of 5-HTTLPR with ADHD and ODD. We evaluated 209 5-9 year-old children with and without ADHD at baseline; approximately 2 years later (i.e., Wave 2), parents and teachers separately rated ADHD and ODD symptoms and youth self-reported antisocial behavior. Controlling for race-ethnicity and baseline ADHD/ODD, narcissism uniquely mediated predictions of multi-informant rated Wave 2 ADHD and ODD from variation in 5-HTTLPR; CU traits mediated predictions of Wave 2 ADHD from variations in 5-HTTLPR, but did not mediate the associations of 5-HTTLPR with ODD or youth self-reported antisocial behavior. Specifically, the number of 5-HTTLPR long alleles positively predicted CU traits and narcissism; narcissism was positively associated with Wave 2 ADHD and ODD symptoms, whereas CU traits were positively associated with Wave 2 ADHD. Child sex also moderated indirect effects of CU traits and narcissism, such that narcissism mediated predictions of ADHD/ODD in girls but not boys. Psychopathic traits may represent a relevant pathway underlying predictions of prospective change in ADHD and ODD from 5-HTTLPR, particularly in girls. We consider the role of psychopathic traits as a potential intermediate phenotype in genetically sensitive studies of child psychopathology. Aggr. Behav. 42:455-470, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.