Predators among us: understanding and assessing psychotherapy Flashcards
How many attributes that characterize psychopaths? (Cleckley)
16
-basis for development of PCL and PCL-R
What findings did John Monaham find?
- reviewed extent that psych was doing good job in crime justice system (correlational rehab psych and predictive risk assessment psych)
- find out it was horrible (would do just as well if a coin was flipped)
how is the PCL-R scored?
rating from 0-2
0=no
1=maybe
2=yes
Assessment of PCL-R- procedure 1
Collateral review: review of file info
*most important part of assessment
Assessment of PCL-R- procedure 2
Interview after reading file
can you do a PCL-R without an interview?
yes
-valid PCL-R ratings can be made solely on the basis of collateral info if sufficient high quality info available
What us the highest score on a PCL-R? What is considered a psychopath?
highest rating is 40
need a score of 30 to be considered a psychopath1/4 of canadian offenders meet criteria
-average is 24
What 3 traits are not in interpersonal/ affective or social deviance categories on PCL-R?
- promiscuous sexual behaviour
- many short term marital relationships
- criminal versatility
what 2 categories is the PCL-R divided into?
- interpersonal/ affective- dangerous and will not be fixed with remediation
- social deviance- attitudes towards criminality, police, gangster thinking (changeable)
woodworth and porter
125 homicide cases in nova scotia and BC
- instrumental vs. reactive homicide
- non psychopathic offenders tend roughly equal numbers of reactive and instrumental homicides
- psychopaths killed for purpose
definition of instrumental homicide
motivated by gain
definition of reactive homicide
emotionally based and may be impulsive
characteristics of psychopaths
- commit greater variety of crimes
- more violent
- tend to have multiple victims, stranger victims, left scene of crime
- plan things out more
what are consequences of having psychopaths testify?
- court cases with testimony of psychopaths resulted in more severe dispositions
How to you attempt to get death sentence for psychopaths?
- when trying to get death sentence, try to elevate PCL-R scores so they look likely to reoffend and untreatable
does psychopathy work for NCRMD?
NO
-psychopaths understand the difference between right and wrong, they just don’t care
Hart, Kropp and Hare
- follow up of 231 offender receiving conditional releases
- level of psychopathy is associated with survival
- 80% of violate conditions within 3 and a half years (not good)
Hemphill and Wong
- looked at PCL-R and recidivism
- found PCL is important predictor across diverse inmate samples
- psychopaths 3x more likely to recidivate than non-psychopaths
Harris
treatment
-group therapy doesn’t help psychopaths
advantages of self report method for psychopaths
- cost effective
- measure emotions that can’t be observed
- easy to administer
what is antisocial personality disorder?
history of behaviours in which rights of others are violated
-describes people who cause crime
symptoms of antisocial personality disorder
need 3 or more:
- deceitfulness
- impulsivity
- irritability
- reckless behaviour
how does APD differ from psychopathy?
APD doesn’t have lack of empathy or regret, lack of being able to take other perspective
-most people that meet criteria for psychopathy meet criteria for APD but not other way around
what is the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths?
psychopaths are born that way, sociopaths becomes like that because of lack of socialization
what are some professions that are higher in psychopathy tendencies?
- CEO
- lawyer
- media
- salesperson
- chef
what is the response modification deficit theory?
- made by joe newton
- fail to use contextual cues that are peripheral to dominant response set to modulate their behaviour
- dont pay attention to ongoing behaviour to see if it’s appropriate
what is the newman card playing task?
- supports réponse modification déficit theory
- most stop around 50 chips
- psychopaths play right till the end (9 losses 1 win)
Iowa gambling task
- deck a and b have high rewards but large deficits
- decks c and d pay off
- normal non psychopaths learn and start responding to desk c and d by end of trial but psychopaths drawn to deck b
what is the affective theory of psychopathy?
-have deficit in experience of certain critical emotions that guide prosocial behaviour
williamson and Hare
- psychopaths didn’t identify emotional words faster than neutral words
- normal people identify emotional words faster
what is the dot problem?
participants stare at x in middle of screen then shown 2 stimuli (one neutral and on showing emotion)
- limbic system will orient to emotional stimuli without conscious awareness of it
- non psychopaths will respond quickly
- psychopaths slower because still staring at middle of screen and not really looking at emotional stimuli
7 conclusions about psychopathy
- assessed reliably and validly
- related to greater general, sexual and violent recidivism
- associated with more instrumental than reactive violence
- associated with less success on conditional response
- associated with poorer response to institutional treatment
- when co existing with aberrant sexual arousal, is particularly problematic
- probably secondary to underdeveloped neural circuitry between limbic system (amygdala) and aspects of pre front cortex (occipital frontal cortex and pre frontal cortex)
