Psychology 2032A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Inter-Rater Reliability, Impression Management, Psychophysiology
6 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Psychopaths
Psychopathy
• Psychopathy: a personality disorder defined by a collection of interpersonal, affective
and behavioural characteristics, including manipulation, lack of remorse or empathy,
impulsivity and antisocial behaviours
- Called interspecies predators
o They seek vulnerable victims to use for their own benefit
o Lack a conscience and feeling for others
o Uses charm or intimidation
o Dominant, selfish, manipulative
o Engage in impulsive and antisocial acts; feel no remorse or shame
• Descriptions of psychopathy exist in most cultures
- Alaska: kulageta desries a idiidual ho repeatedly lies, heats ad steals
things and does not go hunting and, when other men are out of the village, takes
sexual advantage of many women- someone who does not pay attention to
repriads ad ho is alays eig rought to the elders for puishet
o What would the group typically do with a kulangeta? Push him off the ice
when nobody was looking
Assessment
• Herey Clekleys The Mark of Sanity – describes 16 features, ranging from:
- Positive features (good intelligence, social charm, absence of delusions)
- Emotional-interpersonal features (lack of remorse, untruthfulness, unresponsiveness
in interpersonal relations)
- Behavioural problems (inadequately motivated antisocial behaviour, unreliability,
failure to follow any life plan)
• Robert Hare: Hares Psyhopathy Cheklist-Revisited (PCL-R; Hare, 1991, 2003)
• 20-item scale
• Semi-structure interview and review of file information
• Assesses interpersonal (ex. Manipulatives), affective (ex. Lack of remorse), and
behavioural (ex. Antisocial acts) features
• Total scores range from 0 to 40
- Each item is scored on a 3-point scale (2 – item applies; 1 – item applies to some
extent; 0 – item does not apply)
• 30 or higher is psychopath
• Currently psychopathy is a 2-factor model:
- Factor 1: Combination of interpersonal, affective traits
o Strongly related to instrumental violence, emotional-processing deficits,
dropping out treatment and poor treatment response
- Factor 2: Combination of unstable and socially deviant traits
o Strongly related to reoffending, substance abuse, lack of education and poor
family background
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o Glibness/superficial charms
o Grandiose sense of self-worth
o Pathological lying
o Conning/manipulative
o Lack of remorse or guilt
o Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)
o Callousness; lack of empathy
o Failure to accept responsibility for his/her own actions
o Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
o Parasitic lifestyle
o Poor behavioural control
o Lack of realistic long-term goals
o Impulsivity
o Irresponsibility
o Juvenile delinquency
o Early behavior problems
o Revocation of conditional release
• 3-factor model of psychopathy:
1. Arrogant and deceitful interpersonal style
- Split into 2 factors
2. Deficient affective experience
- Removes some of the antisocial items
3. Impulsive and irresponsible behavioural style
• Most recent PCL-R includes these 3 factors, plus antisocial items
• Dr. Hare – oe of the orlds leadig authorities o psyhopathy
- Career began when he encountered a manipulative inmate
- Early research focused on the use of theories, concepts and procedures from
learning, motivation and psychophysiology in the lab
o Emphasis on information-processing and emotional correlates
- Recurrent issue: lack of reliance, valid and accepted method
o Created the PCL-R → leading instrument for assessment of psychopathy
▪ Both for scientific research and for practical applications in mental
health and criminal justice
- Began to study psychopaths in the corporate world
- He believes future forensic psychology researchers and clinicians should ensure that
they are familiar with the advances made in cognitive/affective neuroscience and
their implications of forensic psychology
Self-Report Measures
• Advantages:
- Measure attitudes and emotions that cannot be easily observed
o Feelings of low self-esteem
- Easy to administer, relatively inexpensive, quick to score
o Can use the web
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- Do not require inter-rater reliability
o Only the individual is completing the score
- Can detect faking (good and bad)
• Challenges:
- Psychopaths often lie, manipulate or malinger
o Will say whatever is in their best interest
- May not have sufficient insight into their own traits
o Might not consider themselves as arrogant, dominant or opinionated
- Do not experience certain emotions resulting in difficulty reporting on those
emotions
o Remorse could be confused with the feeling of regret they feel for the
consequences of getting caught
• 2 widely used self-report scales for psychopathic traits:
1. Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised (PPI-R)
- 154-item to measure psychopathic traits in offenders and community samples
- Consists of 8 content scales and 2 validity scales
- Measures 2 factors (fearless dominance and self-centered impulsivity)
2. Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (SRP)
- 64-item assessing psychopathic traits in community samples
- Consists of 4 factors:
o Errati lifestyle I a reellious perso
o Callous affet I a ore tough-minded than other people
o Iterpersoal aipulatio I thik I ould eat a lie detetor)
o Criial tedeies I hae ee arrested y the polie
- Short-form version that consists of 28 items
o Often used for online surveys
• Triarchic model of psychopathy: boldness, meanness and disinhibition
• Self-report psychopathy scale in university students:
- Psychopathic traits are dimensional → people vary on the number and severity of
psychopathic features exhibited
1. Detecting vulnerable victims
- Students with higher SRP scores were more accurate at detecting victim
vulnerability
2. Faking remorse
- The higher the story tellers scored on factor 1 traits, the more genuine their fake
stories were rated by others
3. Defrauding a lottery
- Students scoring higher on SRP were more likely to try to defraud the experimenter
ad lai they ere the true ier
4. Cheating on exams
- 4% were identified as cheating pairs
o Psychopathic traits, as measured by SRP, were strongest predictors of
cheating
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Psychopaths: psychopathy: a personality disorder defined by a collection of interpersonal, affective and behavioural characteristics, including manipulation, lack of remorse or empathy, impulsivity and antisocial behaviours. Push him off the ice when nobody was looking. Assessment: her(cid:448)ey cle(cid:272)kley(cid:859)s the mark of sanity describes 16 features, ranging from: Positive features (good intelligence, social charm, absence of delusions) Emotional-interpersonal features (lack of remorse, untruthfulness, unresponsiveness in interpersonal relations) Behavioural problems (inadequately motivated antisocial behaviour, unreliability, failure to follow any life plan: robert hare: hare(cid:859)s psy(cid:272)hopathy che(cid:272)klist-revisited (pcl-r; hare, 1991, 2003, 20-item scale, semi-structure interview and review of file information, assesses interpersonal (ex. Antisocial acts) features: total scores range from 0 to 40. Each item is scored on a 3-point scale (2 item applies; 1 item applies to some extent; 0 item does not apply: 30 or higher is psychopath, currently psychopathy is a 2-factor model:
