11 research outputs found
Do core interpersonal and affective traits of PCL-R psychopathy interact with antisocial behavior and disinhibition to predict violence?
The utility of psychopathy measures in predicting violence is largely explained by their assessment of social deviance (e.g., antisocial behavior; disinhibition). A key question is whether social deviance interacts with the core interpersonal-affective traits of psychopathy to predict violence. Do core psychopathic traits multiply the (already high) risk of violence among disinhibited individuals with a dense history of misbehavior? This meta-analysis of 32 effect sizes (N Ï 10,555) tested whether an interaction between the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 2003) InterpersonalAffective and Social Deviance scales predicted violence beyond the simple additive effects of each scale. Results indicate that Social Deviance is more uniquely predictive of violence (d Ï .40) than Interpersonal-Affective traits (d Ï .11), and these two scales do not interact (d Ï .00) to increase power in predicting violence. In fact, Social Deviance alone would predict better than the InterpersonalAffective scale and any interaction in 81% and 96% of studies, respectively. These findings have fundamental practical implications for risk assessment and theoretical implications for some conceptualizations of psychopathy
Psychometric Properties of Carver and Whiteâs (1994) BIS/BAS Scales in a Large Sample of Offenders
Contemporary motivational theories of psychopathy (Lykken, 1995) employ constructs from Grayâs Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST; Gray, 1982), behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral activation system (BAS) functioning, to explain etiologic differences in psychopathy subtypes. Carver and Whiteâs (1994) BIS/BAS scales are the most widely used measures of these constructs, yet there is a dearth of research on how these measures perform with offenders. Using a sample of 1515 offenders, we found evidence that five, rather than the usual four factors, underpin the BIS/BAS scales. Importantly, BIS items that tap into anxiety and fear sensitivity, respectively, split to form separate factors, yielding a structure that is more consistent with the revised (Gray & McNaughton, 2000) than with the earlier version of RST. Implications for the use of the BIS/BAS scales to study psychopathy in offenders are discussed