PSYCHOPATHY Flashcards
sociopath
performing antisocial criminal acts
psychopath
performing antisocial criminal acts and additionally by a lack of empathy and degree of remorselessness
Who said sociopath is sometimes preferred by people who are unhappy with biological explanations?
Hare, 1999
explanations for psychopathy
genetic disposition
explanations for sociopathy
social causes (Lykken, 2006)
The Mask of Sanity (Cleckley, 1941)
- psychopaths often look like us
- often charming, very likeable initially
- but fundamentally different
- superficial, manipulative, unreliable, narcissistic
- lack of remorse/ empathy
- lack of nervousness or fear
- doesn’t learn from experience
Ted Bundy
- handsome and charming/ charismatic
- careful and well organised, never left evidence
- narcissistic, grandiose, manipulative, no remorse
- always blames someone else for his crimes
Psychopathy Checklist (revised)
Hare (1980)
conducted a factor analysis using Cleckley’s criteria, finding five factors:
- inability to develop warm relationships
- unstable lifestyle
- inability to accept responsibility
- absence of intellectual or psychiatry problems
- weak behavioural control
=> he then focused on the two factors: emotional detachment and social deviance
PCL (Hare, 1991) and PCL-R (Hare,2003)
- 20 items on a 3-point scale
- trained rater using semi-structured interview and the use of forensic files
- 0-40
- cut of 30+ indicated psychopathy
- Youth= PCL-YU
- self-report psychopathy questionnaire for public
Hare (2003) Four facet model
F1= affective and interpersonal (primary psychopathy)*psychopaths?
F2= social deviance - lifestyle and antisocial (secondary psychopathy)*sociopaths?
Psychopathy is not a mental disorder…
- thought to be a dimension of personality
- in general population, with prevalance of 29% having a level of psychopathy
- some argue F2 of the facet model causes the offending
antisocial personality disorder
- closest to diagnosis of psychopathy
- taps into factor 2 of the facet model, more than factor 1
- psychopathy is not a ASPD specifier: used as a subgroup within DSM
- most violent prisoners would meet ASPD (DSM-IV)
- only a minority would meet the cut off for the PLC-R psychopathy
*conduct disorder (developmental): “,limited prosocial emotions”
psychopathy and crime
- untreatable and a strong predictor of re offending: three times more likely to re offend and 4x more likely for it to be violent
- 1% of general population compared to 20% of prison population, consisting of severe crimes and 50% accountability for violent crimes
Reactive vs Instrumental agression
Reactive
to perceive threat: hostile, angry, impulsive- most people rarely engage in this type of aggression but it is possible
Reactive vs Instrumental agression
Instrumental
- no reaction, planned
- premeditated
- achieve a goal : 45% of psychopaths commit violence for material gain, compared to 45 of non-psychopaths
- defining for psychopathy
Premeditated vs Reactive
Porter and Woodworth, 2002, 2007
- murders committed by non- 71% were reactive
- murders committed by psychopaths-90% were pre meditated= this correlated with factor 1, not factor 2
Psychopathy and intelligence
- whilst manipulative, not all psychopaths are extremely clever predators
- antisocial into students= no relationship between IQ and psychopathy
Deficits in Psychopathy
Lack of fear/ instrumental learning
Principles
Principles:
- toddlers are quite aggressive
- evidence shows most of us learn how not to be aggressive, but a small group does not
-premeditation can be adaptive: it can get what you want
Deficits in Psychopathy
Lack of fear/ instrumental learning
Discipline and moral socialisation
-low fear in psychopaths- not sensitive to operant conditioning/ consequences
[gambling games=psychopaths keep losing money]
Deficits in Psychopathy
Lack of fear/ instrumental learning
Hare (1978)
-light= electric shock
-light=induces fear
-
EDA a measure of arousal linked to swear production
= no EDA increase in psychopaths -do not learn from punishment!
Deficits in Psychopathy
general
- selective deficit
- poor recognition of fear, sadness and happiness
- intact recognition of anger and disgust and surprise (which is mixed)
=links to reduced psychological responses to pain and suffering of others
Deficits in Psychopathy
Cognitive and affective empaths
cognitive:
labelling, predicting and understanding (hard wired)- psychopaths can do this [change after childhood in psychopaths]
affective:
how you feel after
- psychopaths do not have this
Deficits in Psychopathy
Neural deficits in moral reasoning - Moral Reasoning (Glenn, Raine and Schug, 2009)
- runaway train to hit five people
- variations in the story
- no way to warm the workers on the track or to stop the train
- a man is big enough to slow the train
- or variation of switching the track onto one person on the track
=psychopaths ore likely to push the man than the controls
=differences in emotional reaction
Deficits in Psychopathy
Amygdala activity
controls= heightened emotional processing in the brain
psychopaths= amygdala does nothing-increased activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (abstract reasoning/motivation). This overrides the emotional response- used instead of the amygdala.
Deficits in Psychopathy
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
Ventromedial prefrontal cortex: learning from punishment/ operant conditioning
- reduced amygdala responding to emotional words
- reduced PFC response to learning involving punishment
- reduced functions connectivity between amygdala and the ventral medial pre frontal cortex.
