Psychopathy, Empathy, and Perspective -Taking Ability in a Community Sample: Implications for the Successful Psychopathy Concept

This study examined the relationship between psychopathy and two components of empathy including a cognitive component (e.g., perspective-taking ability) and an affective component (e.g., compassion) in a community sample. The Psychopathic Personality Inventory Short Form was used to assess psychopathy and several psychological measures were used to test empathy including the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2, and the Test of Self Conscious Affect -3. Across instruments, psychopathy (as a unitary construct) appeared to be negligibly correlated with perspective-taking scales and negatively correlated with the affective components of empathy. Findings indicated that the emotional deficits were noted most prominently for the behavioral component of psychopathy. Results also showed that higher psychopathy scores in community participants were linked to higher levels of antisocial conduct

Proposed specifiers for conduct disorder-short version (PSCD-SV): psychometric properties, concurrent correlates and parenting predictors

The present study aims to further examine the four-factor model of psychopathy in adolescence with a new alternate model for the assessment of psychopathic traits and conduct disorder (CD): The Proposed Specifiers for Conduct Disorder-Short version (PSCD-SV). Data were collected in a sample of 414 adolescents (49.2% females) aged 12–15 at the first assessment who were then followed-up 2 years later. Results supported the usefulness of the PSCD-SV to assess the broader construct of psychopathy showing good psychometric properties, including adequate reliability and validity, while accounting for all its dimensions. In addition, the study showed close associations between psychopathic traits and adolescent behavioral, emotional and psychosocial maladjustment. Finally, the findings elucidated the PSCD’s connection to parental support and psychological control, and reinforced the potential role of parenting practices as predictors that can act as mechanisms of change in the development of psychopathy. Overall, current findings shed light on conceptual and developmental models of psychopathy that may have implications for assessment, diagnostic classification, prevention, and interventionOpen Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This research was partially funded by Xunta de Galicia under the Programa de Axudas á Etapa Posdoutoral (Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; 2017, 2019 and 2021) and the Consolidation and structuring of competitive research units and other promotional actions in the universities of the SUG; GRC, 2018S

Clinical change in psychopathic traits after the PSYCHOPATHY.COMP program: preliminary findings of a controlled trial with male detained youth

To assess the preliminary efficacy of the PSYCHOPATHY.COMP in reducing psychopathic traits among male detained youth. In this controlled trial, a treatment group (n = 24) and a control group (n = 22) answered the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory-Short at baseline and post-treatment. Treatment participants attended the PSYCHOPATHY.COMP, in addition to the Treatment As Usual (TAU); controls only received TAU. The treatment effects were tested both at a group level (2 × 2 mixed ANOVA) and at an individual level (Reliable Change Index; RCI). ANOVAs showed medium to large effect sizes (η2p), while RCIs revealed strong to moderate effect sizes (Cramer’s V). Despite the limitations, this study offered preliminary evidence for the efficacy of the PSYCHOPATHY.COMP, suggesting that interventions targeting psychopathic traits should be considered in the rehabilitation of detained youth, as the absence of tailored interventions may increase the levels of psychopathic traits and its associated risks.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologi

Callous-unemotional traits only versus the multidimensional psychopathy construct as predictors of various antisocial outcomes during early adolescence

New methods for child psychiatric diagnosis and treatment outcome evaluatio

Juvenile Waiver to Adult Criminal Courts: a Prototypical Analysis of Dangerousness, Sophistication-Maturity, and Amenability to Treatment

Psychological assessment ofjuveniles being considered for waiver to adult criminal courts often requires systematic evaluation of dangerousness, maturity-sophistication, and amenability to treatment (ATX). Despite the importance of these constructs to the evaluation of juveniles, little is known about the criteria that constitute these three constructs. This study was designed to assist in clarifying the constructs of dangerousness, maturity-sophistication, and ATX that typically guide juvenile transfers. Generally, prototypicality ratings were aligned with the current literature on dangerousness, sophistication-maturity, and ATX

An Investigation of Psychopathy in a Female Jail Sample: a Study of Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The present study was designed to assess both the construct of psychopathy in a female jail sample as well as the quality of the measures that have been employed to assess this personality style. Utilizing the multitrait-multimethod matrix proposed by Campbell and Fiske (1959), the construct of psychopathy was measured via three instruments: (a) the Antisocial Scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory, (b) the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised, and (c) the Antisocial Scale of the Personality Disorder Examination. In addition, the predictive validity of each of these measures of psychopathy was evaluated to determine their ability to predict institutional violence and non-compliance. The results revealed significant convergence and divergence across the three instruments supporting the construct of psychopathy in a female jail sample. In addition, the measures of psychopathy demonstrated moderate predictive validity

Introduction to the special section : what do we know about the psychophysiology of child psychopathy and conduct problems?

Various imaging techniques as well as parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system measurement methods have allowed for the increasingly sophisticated investigation of the psychophysiology that underlies the psychopathic personality and its dimensions including Conduct Disorder. With this special section, we were interested in whether the dimensions separately tell us anything different regarding the underlying mechanisms or processes involved in the specific phenotypic expression(s) of psychopathy. Seven empirical articles address this question by examining the psychobiology of psychopathy from a multicomponent perspective. Four articles examined the heart functioning and/or skin conductance of those with elevated psychopathic traits and two studies used EEG to index and image the brain. A single study tested heart functioning in relation to the environment. Findings from the papers indicate differences with respect to psychophysiology across the dimensions and thus signal benefits to examining the broader construct of psychopathy as well as its underpinning dimensions. Those with elevated GM traits appear to have aberrations with respect to self-referential processing and fealessness in adulthood but limited impairments otherwise, whereas those with elevated CU and DI traits show impairment in associative learning and potentially fear processing and arousal. Findings from the special section articles may have implications for the etiology, treatment, and eventually diagnostic manuals (i.e., DSM-5, ICD-11). We hope that these studies in this special section lead to additional multicomponent investigations that ultimately improve our understanding of the psychobiological mechanisms of psychopathy

Elucidating the Construct Validity of the Anitsocial Process Screening Device (APSD) in a Sample of Young Adults

The current investigation sought to examine whether an adolescent-focused measure of psychopathic personality traits, the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick and Hare 2001), could be appropriately used with young adults. Using a sample of university students, we examined the construct validity of the APSD by evaluating the latent factor structure and examining convergent and discriminant validity of factor scores. Results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated that a three factor structure had optimal fit in the current sample. We also compared these model results to a sample of juvenile delinquents, and these analyses indicated that the factor structure was generally invariant across these two samples. Correlation and multiple regression analyses, which examined associations between the APSD and conceptually-relevant external criteria, supported the convergent and discriminant validity of the APSD total and factor scores across two major age categories and differing samples. Implications of these results and directions for future research are discussed