Clarifying Relations Between Core Features of Psychopathy and Substance (Mis)use: A Replication and Extension in Two Large Independent Samples.

Two studies examined the consistency of associations between specific components of psychopathy and two indices of drug use: (a) abstinence and (b) severity (i.e., counts) of lifetime substance use disorder (SUD) symptoms. Participants were 418 male county jail inmates in Illinois (Study One) and 354 male state prison inmates in New Mexico (Study Two). Across samples, lifestyle and antisocial trait ratings were associated with a reduced likelihood of abstinence from most substances. Lifestyle traits were also uniquely associated with severity of substance dependence ratings. Consistent with prior research, interpersonal traits were uniquely related to cocaine indices in both samples. Furthermore, analyses revealed negative associations between the affective features of psychopathy and alcohol dependence in one sample (Study Two), and illicit substance use across samples. These findings demonstrate the robustness of the associations between the interpersonal and affective features of psychopathy and specific aspects of substance (mis)use.

Parental Rejecting Behaviors: Validating a Behaviorally Based Youth-Report Measure of Parental Emotional Abuse.

Positive and warm parental attitudes are associated with better social and emotional child functioning, whereas negative or rejecting parental attitudes are associated with poor outcomes, such as aggression, impaired self-esteem, and emotional instability. The current study investigated the reliability and validity of scores on an interview adaptation of a measure of parental rejecting behavior (PRB) in a sample of detained adolescents. Participants (N = 198) completed a measure assessing their memories of the frequency of specific parental behaviors associated with rejection and self-report measures of exposure to abuse/neglect and community violence, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology. PRB scores were internally consistent and associated with several kinds of child maltreatment. PRB scores correlated uniquely with indices of internalizing and externalizing symptomatology, even after controlling for indices of overall child maltreatment or a specific index of emotional abuse. The pattern of correlations suggests that the measure provides a valid index of parental emotional abuse, which may help identify youth at risk for both internalizing and externalizing disorders.

Emotion processing in Psychopathy Checklist-assessed psychopathy: a review of the literature.

Deficient emotional experience is recognized as one of the central features of psychopathy and an impressive body of empirical findings regarding emotion processing in psychopathy has amassed over the past several decades, resulting in two broad theoretical perspectives. The general emotional deficit perspective postulates a globally reduced capacity for emotional experience and processing across the emotional spectrum. In contrast, according to the specific emotional deficit perspective, psychopathy is associated with abnormal experience of only specific types of emotion; several distinct hypotheses have been proposed under this latter perspective. We systematically and critically review findings from peer-reviewed research of emotion processing in psychopathy in relation to the two theoretical perspectives. In general, findings suggest that, compared to controls, psychopaths exhibit behavioral, psychophysiologic, and regional brain activation anomalies when processing emotion, but their ratings of self-arousal and stimulus valence/intensity do not differ from controls. However, when behavioral findings are examined separately by emotion type, the overall pattern of findings is not clearly consistent with any of the dominant theoretical perspectives of emotion processing in psychopathy. We summarize the current state of the field, including consistencies and inconsistencies in the literature, offer alternative explanations for the findings, and outline directions for future research.