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The link between early traumatic experiences of abuse/neglect and criminal behaviour has been widely demonstrated. Less is known, however, about the relationship between these experiences and the development of psychopathic personality.This study investigated childhood relational trauma in a group of violent offenders from Italy. We hypothesised a higher level of early relational trauma associated with higher scores on psychopathy.Twenty-two offenders convicted for violent crimes aged 22-60 (M=38, SD=11) participated in this study.
Participants were selected by the Italian justice system for an experimental research programme aiming at the evaluation of psychopathic personality traits among violent offenders. Within the group, 14 participants (64%) had committed murder, 4 (18%) had committed rape, and 4 (18%) were convicted child sex offenders. The Traumatic Experience Checklist was used to assess childhood relational trauma; the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was used to assess psychopathy.There was a high prevalence of childhood experiences of neglect and abuse among the offenders. Higher levels of childhood relational trauma were found among participants who obtained high scores on the PCL-R. There was also a significant negative association between age of first relational trauma and psychopathy scores.Findings of this study suggest that an early exposure to relational trauma in childhood can play a relevant role in the development of more severe psychopathic traits. MethodTwenty-two offenders convicted for violent crimes aged 22–60 (M=38, SD=11) participated in this study. Participants were selected by the Italian justice system for an experimental research programme aiming at the evaluation of psychopathic personality traits among violent offenders.
Within the group, 14 participants (64%) had committed murder, 4 (18%) had committed rape, and 4 (18%) were convicted child sex offenders. The Traumatic Experience Checklist was used to assess childhood relational trauma; the Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R) was used to assess psychopathy. Psychopathy is a complex personality disorder, characterising individuals with emotional deficits who lack a regard for social norms, empathy, and remorse (Hare, ). In the early years, Cleckley described the inability to participate in, or understand, the emotional aspects of humanity as one of the fundamental factors in psychopathy:Let us say that, despite his otherwise perfect functioning, the major emotional accompaniments are absent or so attenuated as to count for little. If we grant the existence of a far reaching and persistent blocking, absence, deficit, or dissociation of this sort, we have all that is needed, at the present level of our inquiry, to account for the psychopath.
371).Robert Hare shed light on the affective and interpersonal-related issues linked to psychopathy. His approach—operationalised in the golden standard Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R; Hare, )—contributed to the understanding of the origins and maintenance of the disorder leading to the important distinction between psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (Rutherford, Cacciola, & Alterman, ). The PCL-R enabled the distinction of psychopathy from antisocial personality disorder through specific traits, such as emotional detachment, grandiose sense of self-worth, manipulativeness, lack of empathy, superficial charm, shallow affect, parasitic lifestyle, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and social deviance (Cooke & Michie, ).The characteristics of psychopathy identified by the PCL-R contributed to the understanding of high recidivism rates in psychopathic samples.
In their study of 93 released prisoners, Serin and colleagues demonstrated that the severity of psychopathy was correlated with recidivism. Hart and colleagues showed that out of 231 individuals on parole, only 38% with a diagnosis of psychopathy and only 54% with a mild level of psychopathy were not reconvicted a year after. This finding was corroborated by Hare and colleagues who highlighted—in a sample of 728 offenders—that 81.8% of psychopaths were found guilty for another crime within 2 years after release.Karpman , Lykken , and Porter put forward the idea of psychopathy as a result of dysfunctional interpersonal exchanges and adverse environmental factors, including child abuse and neglect.
This is mirrored in more recent theoretical and clinical research on attachment theory (Bowlby, ) suggesting a relationship between child abuse/neglect and psychopathy (Caretti & Craparo, ). ParticipantsParticipants of this study included 22 convicted male offenders aged between 22 and 60 mean age (M): 38.05; SD=10.76, all diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. Among them, 14 had committed murder (64%); 4 had committed rape (18%); and 4 (18%) were convicted child sex offenders.
They were selected from a wider sample recruited for a comprehensive research programme commissioned by the Italian Ministry of Justice aimed at the evaluation of psychopathic personality traits within the criminal justice system. Traumatic Experience ChecklistTraumatic experiences were assessed with the Traumatic Experience Checklist (TEC; Nijenhuis, Van der Hart, & Kruger, 2002), a self-reported measure addressing 29 types of potentially traumatic events. TEC is a reliable and valid self-reported measure that can be used in both clinical practice and research. Different scores can be calculated including a cumulative score, and scores for emotional neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. The TEC has demonstrated good convergent validity, being associated with alleged reports and official records of traumatic experiences. In this sample, good reliability has been obtained for groups of items related to different types of abuse/neglect with a KR-20 reliability index of 0.65 or even more for groups of only three items.
Hare Psychopathy Checklist RevisedPsychopathy traits were assessed with the PCL-R (Hare, ), a 20-item measure scored on the basis of an interview and on file information. Each item is scored as 0 (not present), 1 (possibly present), or 2 (definitely present), resulting in total PCL-R scores that range from 0 to 40. The PCL-R has demonstrated good internal consistency, test–retest, and inter-rater reliability across diverse populations (e.g.
Alterman, Cacciola, & Rutherford,; Hare et al.,; Vitale, Smith, Brinkley, & Newman, ). The validation of the Italian version of the PCL-R (Caretti et al. ) showed similar psychometric properties, with a good internal consistency (all scales had a Cronbach's α 0.85), good inter-rater reliability all intraclass coefficent correlation (ICC) above 0.90 and good convergent validity with other measures of personality and psychopathy. In this sample, Cronbach's α was 0.93 for the full scale, with α of factors and facets ranging from 0.85 to 0.93. Two independent raters scored the PCL-R, and the ICC for the full scale resulted as 0.94.
ProcedureAll participants were introduced to the aim of the study and were briefed to ensure researchers that they had understood all the steps involved in this research. It was explained to them that data were going to be recorded according to a strict procedure to guarantee the confidentiality of information. Data were kept anonymous by the substitution of the participants’ names with a code. Researchers briefed participants that they had the right to withdraw from the study at any time and to request to delete their responses from the database.
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All participants had to sign an informed consent prior to undertaking the study.The study was ethically cleared by the Italian Ministry of Justice and by an ethics committee within the prison. Download bacaan quran 30 juzuk. The measures were administered individually in the presence of one of the researchers in a quiet room where prisoners usually receive family visits. For safety reasons, a police officer was available close to the room. ResultsWe first checked for asymmetry and kurtosis in PCL-R scores; PCL-R scores were normally distributed in the sample.
The PCL-R mean score was 19.49 (SD=7.71); median was 20.Research with PCL-R usually showed three distinct groups, with participants scoring between 0 and 19 considered to have low psychopathy, participants with scores ranging between 20 and 29 considered as having medium psychopathy, and participants obtaining scores of 30 or more considered as severe psychopaths; however, in our sample only one participant obtained a score of 30 on the PCL-R. Thus, due to the reduced sample size, we lowered the PCL-R cut-off score to 25, after plotting the PCL-R scores and splitting the distribution of PCL-R scores at the nearest point to the 50th percentile of PCL-R scores between 20 and 30: we considered scores of 25 or more to the PCL-R as indicating high-risk for psychopathy (HRP). Eight participants (36.4%) scored 25 or more. This high-risk group was made up of five convicted murderers (35.7%, within the murderers sub-group), one rapist (25%), and two paedophiles (50%).All 22 participants reported having had at least one traumatic experience in their own life. Among them, 17 participants (77.3%) reported early traumatic experiences (emotional neglect and/or physical, sexual, emotional abuse).
In more detail, 4 (18.2%) reported sexual abuse, 11 (50%) reported physical abuse, 9 (40.9%) reported emotional abuse, and 15 (68.2%) reported emotional neglect (see ). Twelve of the participants (55.5%) experienced at least two forms of abuse. There was some evidence that the risk for psychopathy increases when trauma occurs early in life. Results showed that people in the HRP subgroup tended to have experienced a relational traumatic event earlier on in life compared to the rest of participants (mean age: 5.6, SD=2.85 vs. 11.5, SD=8.86; t(20)=2.18, p=0.05; ).
Data also showed that seven out of eight participants (87.5%) in the HRP group experienced a relational trauma before the age of 10, which is the age in which children in Italy terminate their primary education. The Chi-square test showed that people in the HRP group were more likely to experience traumatic events before this age, in respect with other participants χ 2(1)=4.20, p=0.040;. These were mostly related to abuse and neglect in family environments (6 out of 7).
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DiscussionPsychopathy represents a complex construct and is the subject of a major clinical debate. Theory and empirical research maintain that psychopathy may be linked to a history of trauma.Among studies referring to the heterogeneity of psychopathy, Porter —following Karpman's distinction—has proposed that primary psychopathy mainly reflects a congenital affective deficit whereas secondary psychopathy reflects a detachment of emotions resulting from negative childhood experiences and acquired affective disturbances. Also, Blackburn (; Blackburn, Logan, Donnelly, & Renwick, ) has defined a typology in which two subtypes of psychopaths (secondary psychopaths and inhibited psychopaths) were more associated with high anxiety and withdrawal. These subtypes have been shown to be associated with a history of trauma. Therefore, analysing the relationship between traumatic stress symptoms and the various facets of psychopathy is of particular relevance in terms of clinical assessment and treatment.The study explored this link by investigating the role of childhood experiences of abuse and neglect in individuals who presented criminal behaviours.
IntroductionThe concept of psychopathy has evolved from its traditional clinical descriptions, and has been operationalized in several assessment instruments, among which the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R), and its derivatives, the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV) and the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV), stand out. Recent work with the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRPS), which was designed to resemble the PCL scales, has also shown excellent promise.,In Latin America, several descriptive studies have assessed the prevalence of psychopathy in prison populations and the psychometric properties of the PCL-R. Nevertheless, the PCL scales, which provide a valid and reliable assessment of the larger psychopathy construct, have not been extensively examined via sophisticated modeling in diverse cultural samples outside of North America, where most PCL-R research has been conducted.On the other hand, besides the evidence that could be supplied by testing this construct with the PCL-R, additional evidence might be obtained by doing the same with other instruments that provide different information, such as the SRPS. Trying to obtain equivalent results based on two types of information, one coming from a professional assessment of an individual and the other coming solely from the individual's self-report, is an even more rigorous examination of the larger construct.The structure of psychopathy, as that of most concepts in psychology and in science, makes reference to a latent variable that is not directly observable. The development of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and other measures for latent variable analysis made it possible to go further than exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and propose specific model hypotheses that can be statistically tested (e.g., item-to-factor associations as well as correlations between factors). If the latent variable model receives support based on different samples of individuals that have been assessed in diverse ways, the sustainability of the model increases as a viable representation of a theoretical construct, because the latent variables allow generalization of associations.
Recent studies based on latent variables analysis support the four-factor model of psychopathy., This model represents four highly correlated dimensions of psychopathy: interpersonal, affective, impulsive lifestyle, and different antisocial externalization trends.The objective of this study was to test the four-factor empirical model of the construct of psychopathy in a Chilean prison population by conducting CFA using the PCL-R and the Self-Report of Psychopathy - III - Short Form (SRP-III-SF). MinimumMaximumMean ± standard deviationFactor 10.008.003.63±2.14Factor 20.008.004.74±1.79Factor 31.0010.006.34±1.99Factor 40.0010.004.91±2.70Total4.0035.0020.92±6.83A CFA was carried out using the four-factor model. All items make an important contribution to the model. The items that have the lowest factor loadings are impulsivity and lack of realistic, long term goals. The items callous/lack of empathy, conning/manipulative, irresponsibility, and juvenile delinquency have outstanding factor loadings, revealing that these items are particularly good indicators for detecting highly psychopathic individuals.
Robert Hare Psychopathy Checklist Pdf
Strong latent correlations were also obtained among the factors, in particular between factor 1 and factor 2 and between factor 3 and factor 4. Figure 1 Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R) four-factor model confirmatory factor analysis (n=206). Tucker index = 0.96; root mean square error of approximation = 0.04.The model fit was very good as measured with the TLI and RMSEA. The TLI was in the excellent range, whereas the RMSEA value was indicative of good model fit.The distribution of the total SRP-SF scores was also normal (K-S = 0.812; p = 0.525). Descriptive statistics for the total score as well as for the factors are shown in.
The correlation between the total values of both instruments was 0.373 (p. DiscussionThis study tested the four-factor empirical model of the construct of psychopathy in a Chilean prison population by conducting CFA of the PCL-R and SRP-III-SF instruments.
The results support global model fit both for the PCL-R and for the SRP-III-SF.Fit for the PCL-R model was excellent. These results are consistent with the formulation of the construct of psychopathy and with a wide variety of international studies with different samples., The relation pattern between the factors and the individual items found in our analysis was similar to those found in the Canadian and U.S. Samples, thus providing additional evidence to support the universality of the construct.As expected for a self-reported instrument, CFA of the model with the SRP-SF showed a pattern of slightly lower item-to-factor loadings compared to the item loadings for the PCL-R. Nevertheless, the SRP-SF items also had significant factor loadings and acceptable model fit.The finding of strong inter-correlations among the SRP-SF and PCL-R factors warrants some commentary. As discussed by Hare & Neumann, the PCL-R conceptualization of psychopathy involves a superordinate construct underpinned by four first-order factors or dimensions: interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial.
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More specifically, previous research has shown that the correlated first-order PCL-R factors can be accounted for by a second-order (superordinate) psychopathy factor. Similarly, the strong inter-correlations among the SRPS factors are to be expected, given that each of the first-order factors can also be accounted for a superordinate (second-order) factor which represents the syndrome of psychopathy. These findings for the PCL-R and SRP-SF are in line with behavioral genetic studies, which also find that first-order psychopathic traits can be accounted for by a superordinate (common) genetic factor. Taken together, the evidence indicates that both the covert (interpersonal, affective) and overt (antisocial, impulsive externalizing lifestyle) features are all expressions of the psychopathy construct.Though the PCL-R and it derivatives are not exactly equivalent to the construct of psychopathy, the findings reported herein attest the robustness of the four-factor model and demonstrate that the measure is highly compatible both with the clinical tradition and with the modern empirical conceptualization of psychopathy. These psychopathic personality dimensions empirically based on the PCL-R reflect a personality disposition that is highly antisocial and undercontrolled, that includes the deceitful presentation of oneself, pathological lying, lack of remorse and guilt, and irresponsibility, as well as criminal versatility.It should be noted that some studies sustain a three-factor hierarchical model. Nevertheless, several authors have stated that this model has severe conceptual and statistical problems.
Thus, the present study only tested the four-factor model, in view of its wide acceptance, leaving the testing of other models as an avenue for future research.The modeling approach used in this study gives important methodological consistency and contributes to obtaining evidence in favor of construct validity. Although using EFA provides a way of understanding the correlation pattern between large groups of variables, there is discrepancy among researchers regarding its use, as there are different criteria and the resulting EFA structure would only constitute one of the possible solutions derived from the data.
Thus, it is probable that the same structure will be confirmed in another sample extracted from the same population. If there were different criteria among researchers, however, there might also be different answers with respect to the number of factors that should be retained. On the other hand, the use of CFA has comparative advantages when the hypothesis states that several factors have a certain meaning, because it proves fit to a model that has individualized a specific number of theoretical or empirical relevant factors.It is important to mention that good statistical fit to a latent variable model does not prove the existence of contributory latent variables. What is stated in the present study is that a good model fit constitutes evidence to support the tested hypothesis.
Latent variables allow generalization of associations; in this study, as the latent variable model is sustained on the basis of a sample of individuals assessed in different ways, the likelihood of the model as a viable representation of a theoretical construct is strengthened.Finally, we must address the usefulness of these findings beyond the forensic field. The construct of psychopathy is relevant for mental health in general, because its evaluation is of paramount importance when a decision must be made regarding commitment or discharge of a patient from a mental health institution due to a potential risk of violence. This risk should also be considered in cases of domestic violence, as well as mobbing or violence in the workplace. Psychopathy has been recognized since its first descriptions as being a personality condition that greatly affects interpersonal relations. The information present in this study will be useful not only in the forensic field but also in the clinical field because it provides clinicians with tools to make reliable evaluations in their respective fields.
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