PSYCHOPATHY

Question 1

sociopath

Answer 1

performing antisocial criminal acts

Question 2

psychopath

Answer 2

performing antisocial criminal acts and additionally by a lack of empathy and degree of remorselessness

Question 3

Who said sociopath is sometimes preferred by people who are unhappy with biological explanations?

Answer 3

Hare, 1999

Question 4

explanations for psychopathy

Answer 4

genetic disposition

Question 5

explanations for sociopathy

Answer 5

social causes (Lykken, 2006)

Question 6

The Mask of Sanity (Cleckley, 1941)

Answer 6

• 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

Question 7

Ted Bundy

Answer 7

• handsome and charming/ charismatic
• careful and well organised, never left evidence
• narcissistic, grandiose, manipulative, no remorse
• always blames someone else for his crimes

Question 8

Psychopathy Checklist (revised)

Hare (1980)

Answer 8

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

Question 9

PCL (Hare, 1991) and PCL-R (Hare,2003)

Answer 9

• 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

Question 10

Hare (2003) Four facet model

Answer 10

F1= affective and interpersonal (primary psychopathy)*psychopaths?

F2= social deviance - lifestyle and antisocial (secondary psychopathy)*sociopaths?

Question 11

Psychopathy is not a mental disorder…

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

antisocial personality disorder

Answer 12

• 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”

Question 13

psychopathy and crime

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

Reactive vs Instrumental agression

Reactive

Answer 14

to perceive threat: hostile, angry, impulsive- most people rarely engage in this type of aggression but it is possible

Question 15

Reactive vs Instrumental agression

Instrumental

Answer 15

• no reaction, planned
• premeditated
• achieve a goal : 45% of psychopaths commit violence for material gain, compared to 45 of non-psychopaths
• defining for psychopathy

Question 16

Premeditated vs Reactive

Porter and Woodworth, 2002, 2007

Answer 16

• murders committed by non- 71% were reactive

- murders committed by psychopaths-90% were pre meditated= this correlated with factor 1, not factor 2

Question 17

Psychopathy and intelligence

Answer 17

• whilst manipulative, not all psychopaths are extremely clever predators
• antisocial into students= no relationship between IQ and psychopathy

Question 18

Deficits in Psychopathy

Lack of fear/ instrumental learning
Principles

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Deficits in Psychopathy

Lack of fear/ instrumental learning
Discipline and moral socialisation

Answer 19

-low fear in psychopaths- not sensitive to operant conditioning/ consequences

[gambling games=psychopaths keep losing money]

Question 20

Deficits in Psychopathy

Lack of fear/ instrumental learning
Hare (1978)

Answer 20

-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!

Question 21

Deficits in Psychopathy

general

Answer 21

• 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

Question 22

Deficits in Psychopathy

Cognitive and affective empaths

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Deficits in Psychopathy

Neural deficits in moral reasoning 
-
Moral Reasoning (Glenn, Raine and Schug, 2009)

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

Deficits in Psychopathy

Amygdala activity

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

Deficits in Psychopathy

Ventromedial prefrontal cortex

Answer 25

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.