Lecture 9: The Criminal Psychopath Flashcards
1
Q
What does the criminal psychopath tend to “look like”?
A
- Wide variation, but, they all show:
- Selfish orientation and profound emotional deficit
- Little or no conscience
- About 0.6% of the population meets the criteria
- Correlates with: being male, violent behaviour, incarceration, drug dependence, and DSM personality disorders (narcissistic, histrionic, etc.)
- Female psychopaths are fewer than and qualitatively different from male psychopaths; e.g. don’t show drug dependence or violent behaviour as often
2
Q
What are high-functioning psychopaths?
A
- Similar in many ways to criminal psychopaths, except that they have been able to stay on the right side of the law
- May be more intelligent and less violent than the psychopaths who end up in prison
- The fundamental personality traits of psychopathy could lead instead to doing quite well in some non-criminal settings
- Can be quite lucrative and beneficial in the cutthroat business world
3
Q
What are the three main causes of psychopathy?
A
Genetics, neuroanatomy, environmental predictors
4
Q
How do genetics contribute to psychopathy?
A
- Some individuals are predisposed to have deficits in emotionality from birth
- e.g. Low activity in MAOA has been associated with factor 1 trait scores
- High activity in MAOA has been associated with factor 2 trait scores
- MAOA is responsible for breaking down dopamine and serotonin
- Extreme abnormalities in this enzyme result in severe impulsive behaviour
5
Q
How does neuroanatomy contribute to psychopathy?
A
- e.g. Phineas Gage: accidentally damaged a significant portion of his prefrontal cortex
- Went from well tempered to impulsive, irresponsible, sexual promiscuous, and verbally abusive
- Further studies suggest the orbital frontal cortex specifically play an important role in mediating psychopathic behaviours
- In fact, damage to this area can lead to pseudopsychopathy (like Gage)
- The amygdala may also play a role
- Responsible for emotional recognition and regulation (and motivational approach behaviour)
- Amygdala damage can result in difficulty processing emotional stimuli
- People with amygdala damage often have difficulty recognizing expressed emotion
- Resulting in considering strangers untrustworthy
- They also have worse decision making ability
- When psychopaths viewed a scene of a murder, even compared to a non-psychopathic murderer, their brains were barely active
- Processing a rape or murder scene for psychopaths is like how a non-psychopathic person would process “emotional words” like “rape” or “murder”
- They don’t process it emotionally but rationally
6
Q
How do environmental predictors contribute to psychopathy?
A
- Even with genetic or neurobiological predisposition, without the environmental factor, you’re less (to not) likely to become a psychopath
- Children with psychopathic traits experience parental rejection (especially from their mothers) and emotional deprivation
- This means they grow up without strong emotional ties to their mothers (or either one of their parents)
- A huge predictor is abuse
- Childhood physical, emotional, and sexual abuse
- Parental alcoholism
- Neglect—where do children learn normal social interaction?
- Not teaching their children what normal social interaction is through neglect, and parents might also be teaching their children wrong/bad social interaction
- Chronic and harsh stress can result in irreversible abnormalities in the amygdala
- Leading to a lack of empathy as a protective factor
- It’s theorized that extreme physical or sexual abuse by primary caregivers results in a coping mechanism → turning off emotions
- i.e. No matter what you do with an abusive parent, they will react to you negatively, so in order to stop over-stimulating their amygdala people have to “turn it off” and this switching off often becomes irreversible
- Their approach avoidance has been burned out, so punishment doesn’t bother them
- Resulting in ultimately being unable to form significant interpersonal relationships based on positive affect
7
Q
How do psychopathic criminals fare in parole?
A
- There is a high risk of recidivism and currently small likelihood of rehabilitation
- Key predictor of violent recidivism in a variety of settings
- On the VRAG, there’s another section that’s how high they score on the criminal psychopath checklist
- Criminal psychopaths trying to resist their urges is like being on a diet
- You can restrict yourself for as long as you want, but once in a while you’ll break and want to eat junk food
- Additionally, like smokers, the more stressed they are the more likely they’ll be driven to commit a crime
- Based on 2009, hey are 2.5x more successful than other offenders in parole applications!
- Why? They’re great at convincing other people through their superficial charm
8
Q
What does a lack of empathy combined with poor behavioural controls result in?
A
- Reactive, predatory, and premeditated violence (escalating in scale)
- Predatory violence: being able to target the weakest person
- Premeditated is one step further: they’ve brought the weapons, planned the date and time, cleaned up the location afterwards, etc.
- But they also have impulse control problems? There’s a nuance to the definition
- Some people have impulse control problems in the sense that they have an impulse and act on it (see someone’s drink you want then drink it)
- A psychopath has long-term impulse control problems; e.g. someone cuts you off in traffic and you want to cut them off (most normal people wouldn’t do it and if you do then you have impulse control problems)
- A psychopath would plot to find out who this person is then try to cut them off in traffic later on when the other person doesn’t expect it
9
Q
What features are unique to psychopathic offenders?
A
- Commit more crimes
- Commit a greater variety of crimes
- Are more violent during the commission of crime
- Often times it’s gratuitous/unnecessary violence
10
Q
What are the differences between personality disorder and psychopathy?
A
- All psychopaths likely qualify for PD (ASPD, NPD, HPD)
- But not all of those with PD are psychopaths
- It’s a matter of degree; you would have multiple personality disorders to have to pass the threshold for psychopathy
- ASPD is diagnosed in about 50% of violent criminals
11
Q
How do psychopaths target their victims?
A
- They are successful scam artists, but how do they target their victims?
- As compared to non-psychopaths, it seems they have a truly predatory worldview where they seek out the weakest people
- They have a great ability to spot and select vulnerable individuals around them
- We’re all pretty bad at deception detection, making us all potential targets
- But psychopaths seem to be able to target those who are especially easy to manipulate
- Relevant characteristics in victims are low self-esteem, lower assertiveness, increased depression and anxiety
- In a growing number of studies, psychopaths have shown a keen ability to detect these signs of vulnerability in others
12
Q
What did Book, Quinsey, & Langford (2007) find about how psychopaths target their victims?
A
- Psychopaths are better able to sense a lack of assertiveness after simply viewing a two-minute video of a vulnerable target
13
Q
What did Wheeler, Book, & Costello (2009) find about how psychopaths target their victims based on body language?
A
- Psychopaths are able to detect vulnerability based on walking style and other body language cues alone
14
Q
What did Wilson, Demetrioff, & Porter (2008) find about how psychopaths and vulnerability?
A
- In a recall test of characters based on a story they read: male psychopaths have nearly perfect recall for sad and unsuccessful female characters (i.e. those likely to be highly vulnerable)
- But impaired memory for other less vulnerable characters
15
Q
What is the difference between instrumental and reactive violence?
A
- Instrumental violence: Violence used to achieve a goal
- Reactive violence: Violence in response to a perceived threat
- Psychopaths have a higher incidence of instrumental violence
- The relationship is stable and consistent
- Even for extreme acts of violence it’s usually due to personal gain
- In fact, nearly all murders by psychopaths are carefully planned and are not reactive crimes
