What is Psychopathy?

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What is Psychopathy?

The concept of psychopathy has a long and prominent history in psychiatric and psychological literature. Adult psychopathy represents a distinct cluster of affective, interpersonal, and behavioral characteristics. Cleckley (1976), in his seminal work, The Mask of Sanity, described the prototypical psychopath as an individual who was superficially charming and intelligent, but dishonest and manipulative. A psychopathic individual is extremely egocentric, rarely feels empathy, and tends not to form lasting attachments to people or principles. The psychopath is prone to antisocial behavior and shows a blatant lack of remorse for harm done to others and a failure to learn from prior experiences.

The criminal psychopath has a pattern of offending that is more persistent, severe, violent, and versatile than other criminals, tends to recidivate more quickly and more frequently than non-psychopathic offenders, and tends to be less amenable to treatment.

Robert Hare (2003) developed the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), currently the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised, second edition (PCL-R) to measure the construct of psychopathy as a distinct personality disorder. The PCL-R has become the gold standard for assessing psychopathy in forensic and correctional settings. Over the past 15-20 years, the PCL-R has emerged as a robust predictor of violence and recidivism in adult offenders.

There is a large body of research suggesting that there are quantitative and qualitative differences between psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders in terms of the violence they perpetrate. Psychopathic offenders engage in more frequent violence that is "more likely to be predatory in nature, motivated by readily identifiable goals, and carried out in a callous, calculated manner without the emotional context that usually characterizes the violence of other offenders" (Hare, 2003, p. 136).

Our group at the Virginia Youth Violence Project (Cornell et al., 1996) categorized 106 male offenders into groups of nonviolent offenders, instrumental violent offenders, or reactive violent offenders. Instrumental violence is goal-directed and purposeful (e.g. robbery), while reactive violence is typically a hostile response to provocation. Cornell and colleagues conducted tested the hypothesis that instrumental offenders would score higher on the PCL-R than reactive offenders. Results indicated that instrumental offenders could be reliably distinguished from reactive offenders on the basis of violent crime behavior and level of psychopathy. Group differences could not be attributed to participant age, race, length of incarceration, or extent of prior criminal record. Cornell developed a coding guide to categorize violent crimes as instrumental or hostile/reactive forms of aggression for this study. This coding guide is available to researchers, and can be downloaded in PDF format. Download PDF file

Debate Concerning the Psychopathy Checklist

Skeem and Cooke (2010) have questioned whether criminal behavior should be regarded as a central component of psychopathy or simply a correlated development. They have suggested that much of the predictive validity of the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) rests in its inclusion of measures of criminal behavior, and that a purer measure of psychopathy would exclude criminal behavior and focus on personality characteristics. Hare and Neumann (2010) have replied in defense of the PCL and argue that the instrument does not make criminal behavior central to psychopathy, although the construct properly should include broader measures of persistent problematic behavior, which could include criminal acts. They review considerable evidence showing that the predictive validity of the PCL does not rest solely on the items deemed to represent criminal behavior. The voluminous research literature on the PCL can be reviewed on Robert Hare’s website <http://www.hare.org/>

References

Cleckley, H.M. (1976). The mask of sanity. St. Louis, MO: Mosby

Cornell, D.G., Warren, J., Hawk, G., Stafford, E., Oram, G., & Pine, D. (1996). Psychopathy in instrumental and reactive offenders. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 783-790.

Hare, R.D. (1998). Without conscience: The disturbing world of the psychopaths among us. New York: Guilford Press.

Hare, R.D. (2003). Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), 2nd ed. Technical manual. North Tonawanda, NY: Multi-Health Systems.

Hare, R. D. (2006). Psychopathy: A clinical and forensic overview. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 29(3), 709-724.

Hare, R. D., & Neumann, C. S. (2010). The role of antisociality in the psychopathy construct: Comment on Skeem and Cooke (2010). Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 446-454.

Skeem, J. L., & Cooke, D. J. (2010). Is criminal behavior a central component of psychopathy? Conceptualdirections for resolving the debate. Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 433-445.

Skeem, J. L., & Cooke, D. J. (2010). One measure does not a construct make: Directions toward reinvigoratingpsychopathy research - Reply to Hare and Neumann (2010). Psychological Assessment, 22(2), 455-459.