Triarchic psychopathy and deficits in facial affect recognition.

OBJECTIVE: Impaired socialization due to amygdala dysfunction has been proposed as a factor underlying psychopathy. Supporting this hypothesis, some research indicates that psychopathy is associated with deficits in facial affect recognition, but other studies have failed to find such a relationship. This study investigated whether healthy young adults elevated in psychopathic traits displayed deficits in identifying facial affective displays overall as well as deficits specific to fear recognition. METHOD: Facial affect recognition was measured in a sample of 110 undergraduate men (n = 36) and women (n = 74). Participants completed the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure, and participants' eye gaze was measured using ASL Eye Trac 6. The facial affect recognition task was created using the NimStim facial expression stimuli. RESULTS: Individuals elevated in psychopathic traits did not display deficits in recognition of emotional faces overall or for fearful faces compared to individuals lower in psychopathic traits. However, meanness was negatively correlated with fear identification. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that deficient emotion processing in psychopathic individuals may be specific to ambiguous affective expressions. We discuss implications for the study of psychopathy and emotion processing.

Examining the utility of the Personality Assessment Screener in three criminal justice samples.

Many individuals in forensic/correctional settings experience significant mental health problems, yet effective screening tools to identify such difficulties are in relatively short supply. This study investigates the clinical utility of the Personality Assessment Screener (PAS; Morey, 1997), a 22-item self-report measure of risk for emotional and behavioral dysfunction, across three archival criminal justice samples (incarcerated sex offenders, prison inmates housed in general population and psychiatric units, and jail detainees). The PAS is derived from the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991, 2007), a more comprehensive measure of emotional and behavioral disturbances that is widely used in forensic/correctional settings. The PAS total score effectively identified those with clinically significant elevations on the PAI and also significantly correlated with various criterion measures tapping psychological dysfunction. Existing interpretive ranges and labels used to describe PAS scores in general clinical settings were problematic, however, and may require revision for use in these contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Dangerous, depraved, and death-worthy: A meta-analysis of the correlates of perceived psychopathy in jury simulation studies.

OBJECTIVES: Experimental research suggests that legal defendants described as psychopathic are generally, although not uniformly, judged more negatively and punitively. Understanding the correlates of perceived psychopathy, regardless of exposure to mental health evidence, is an important step towards clarifying divergent findings. METHOD: We conducted a quantitative synthesis of ten juror simulation studies (combined N = 2,980) examining the meta-analytic association between perceived defendant psychopathy and various psychologically important and legally relevant outcomes. RESULTS: Perceiving someone as being more psychopathic was associated with viewing that defendant as more dangerous (r W = 0.31) and evil ( r W = 0.44). Moreover, perceptions of defendant psychopathy predicted greater support for more adverse consequences in terms of capital sentencing ( r W = 0.22) and sentence length ( r W = 0.27), although not perceived treatment amenability ( r W = 0.09). CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the importance of including ratings of perceived psychopathy in experimental designs to identify the circumstances under which psychopathy evidence might prejudicially impact case outcomes.

Using the Personality Assessment Inventory Antisocial and Borderline Features Scales to Predict Behavior Change: A Multisite Longitudinal Study of Youthful Offenders.

A substantial amount of research has examined the developmental trajectory of antisocial behavior and, in particular, the relationship between antisocial behavior and maladaptive personality traits. However, research typically has not controlled for previous behavior (e.g., past violence) when examining the utility of personality measures, such as self-report scales of antisocial and borderline traits, in predicting future behavior (e.g., subsequent violence). Examination of the potential interactive effects of measures of both antisocial and borderline traits also is relatively rare in longitudinal research predicting adverse outcomes. The current study utilizes a large sample of youthful offenders ( N = 1,354) from the Pathways to Desistance project to examine the separate effects of the Personality Assessment Inventory Antisocial Features (ANT) and Borderline Features (BOR) scales in predicting future offending behavior as well as trends in other negative outcomes (e.g., substance abuse, violence, employment difficulties) over a 1-year follow-up period. In addition, an ANT × BOR interaction term was created to explore the predictive effects of secondary psychopathy. ANT and BOR both explained unique variance in the prediction of various negative outcomes even after controlling for past indicators of those same behaviors during the preceding year.

Development and Initial Validation of an Inconsistent Responding Scale for the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory.

The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) is widely used in research, but there currently exist no means to identify potentially invalid protocols resulting from careless or random responding. We describe the development of an inconsistent responding scale for the YPI using three archival samples of youths, including two from the United States (juvenile justice and middle school) and one from Germany (vocational training school). We first identified pairs of correlated YPI items and then created a total score based on the sum of the absolute value of the differences for each item pair. The resulting scale strongly differentiated between genuine protocols and randomly generated YPI data (n = 1,000) across samples (AUC values = .88-.92). It also differentiated between genuine protocols and those same protocols after 50% of the original YPI items were replaced with random data (AUCs = .77-.84). Scores on this scale also demonstrated fairly consistent patterns of association with theoretically relevant correlates.

Interrater reliability of Violence Risk Appraisal Guide scores provided in Canadian criminal proceedings.

Published research suggests that most violence risk assessment tools have relatively high levels of interrater reliability, but recent evidence of inconsistent scores among forensic examiners in adversarial settings raises concerns about the "field reliability" of such measures. This study specifically examined the reliability of Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) scores in Canadian criminal cases identified in the legal database, LexisNexis. Over 250 reported cases were located that made mention of the VRAG, with 42 of these cases containing 2 or more scores that could be submitted to interrater reliability analyses. Overall, scores were skewed toward higher risk categories. The intraclass correlation (ICCA1) was .66, with pairs of forensic examiners placing defendants into the same VRAG risk "bin" in 68% of the cases. For categorical risk statements (i.e., low, moderate, high), examiners provided converging assessment results in most instances (86%). In terms of potential predictors of rater disagreement, there was no evidence for adversarial allegiance in our sample. Rater disagreement in the scoring of 1 VRAG item (Psychopathy Checklist-Revised; Hare, 2003), however, strongly predicted rater disagreement in the scoring of the VRAG (r = .58). (PsycINFO Database Record