Lecture 10 part 2 Flashcards
Impact of psychopathic traits
- Presence of others with psychopathic traits increases psychopathic traits in others
- Defendant having psychopathic traits increase chances of wanting to give the death penalty and decreases chances of wanting to give them rehabilitation
Psychopathy motives for murder
Psychopaths much more likely to engage in instrumental violence over reactive violence
Psychopathy and general reoffending
Higher the PCL-R scores, more likely to reoffend
Treatment of psychopaths
- Clinicians believe psychopaths are difficult to treat
- Treatment made psychopaths worse
- More likely to reoffend
Psychopaths and violence
- Small proportion of population but large proportion of crimes committed
- Start criminal careers younger
- Persist longer and greater variety of crime
- More violent crime
- More likely to reoffend
- Do not commit homocide more often than non psychopathic individuals
Psychopaths in the community
- Rare
- 5% of sample of coorporate professionals met the criteria for psychopathy
Psychopaths and victims in relationships
- Talked into being victims
- Lied to
- Economically, emotionally and psychologically abused
- Victims of multiple infidelities
- Isolated
- Children who were mistreated
Psychopathy and sexual violence
- Fewer sexual offences than non psychopathic people
- PCL-R scores correlated with number of prior offences and not prior sexual offences
- Child molesters have lowest psychopathic scores
Psychopathy and treatment
- Positive effect for non psychopaths
- Negative effect for psychopaths
- Psychopathic sex offenders showed positive gains
- High risk psychiatric patients with high PCL-R scores also had reduced reoffending rates with treatment
Psychopathy in youth
- Antisocial process screening device
- Hare psychopathy checklist: youth version
- Possiility of psychopathic characteristics in developing youth is a common feature
- Those with high PCL-YV scores begin criminal activity younger, engage in more violence, and are at greater risk when released
- May be more responsive to intervention
- Intensive treatment centers are twice as good as correctional centers
Nature vs nurture in psychopathy
- Increasing evidence to suggest genetic contribution to psychopathy
- Identical twins have similar psychopathy scores
Predictor of psychopathy
- Parent with criminal history
- Sons with uninvolved fathers
- Low family income
- Disrupted families
- Physical neglect
Response modulation defecit theory
- Psychopaths fail to use contextual cues that are peripheral to a dominant response set to modulate behaviour
- Do not pay attention to cues that would inhibit behaviour
- Fail to learn to avoid punishment
Affective theory of psychopathy
- Have deficit in experiencing certain emotions that guide prosocial behaviour and inhibit deviance
- Brain waves and response times to emotional and non emotional stinuli show little difference
- Psychopaths did not identify emotional words faster than neutral words
- Psychopaths’ startle-elicit blinks did not differ in magnitude across pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral slides
- Some suggest amygdala dysfunction, others suggest attention deficit to explain affective deficits
Psychopathy and affect language
Know only dictionary meaning of words
Lexical decision task
- Unline non psychopathic individuals, psychopaths did not recognized emotional words quicker
- Psychopaths perform task in a more superficial manner
Startle blink
- Reflex occurs when something unexpected occurs
- Primed if negative emotional state or feels threatened
- Reduced if person in positive emotional state
Psychopathy and startle reflex
Compared to non psychopathic individuals:
- Startled more with pleasant images
- Startled relatively the same with neutral images
- Startled signifcantly less with unpleasant images
Psychopathy and law enforcement
Hard to interrogate psychopaths if they:
- try to outwit
- enjoy being the focus of investigation
- Attempt to control the interrogation
- Will not be fooled by bluffs
- Attempt to shock
