Psychopathy and sexual assault: static risk factors, emotional precursors, and rapist subtypes.

This study compared psychopathic and nonpsychopathic rapists on static risk factors and on emotional and motivational precursors. Sixty incarcerated rapists were assessed for psychopathy with the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (R. D. Hare, 1991), and they were classified according to the Massachusetts Treatment Center: Revised Rapist Typology, Version 3 (R. A. Knight & R. A. Prentky, 1990b). Psychopathy was positively associated with past nonsexual offenses and negatively associated with age onset for criminal offending, number of sexual victims, and the intensity of negative emotions experienced before sexual offending. However, psychopathy was not related to sexual offense history, age of onset for sexual offending, or victim harm. Last, psychopaths were most likely to be classified as opportunistic and pervasively angry rapists. The findings indicate that psychopathy should be considered when developing intervention strategies for rapists.

Performance of criminal psychopaths on selected neuropsychological tests.

Screening batteries of standard neuropsychological tests were administered to 2 different samples (Ns = 90 and 167) of male prison inmates. Scores on the revised Psychopathy Checklist were used to divide inmates in each sample into high, moderate, and low psychopathy groups. There were no group differences in test performance in either of the samples, even when the effects of self-reported psychopathology and substance abuse were taken into account. The overall prevalence of both test-specific and global neuropsychological impairment was low and did not vary significantly across the 3 groups. The results provide no support for traditional brain-damage explanations of psychopathy.

Novaco Anger Scale: reliability and validity within an adult criminal sample.

This study investigated the reliability and validity of the Novaco Anger Scale (NAS; Novaco, 1994) with two groups of correctional offenders, General Admissions and Violent Admissions. Predominantly White male offenders (N = 204), ranging in age from 18 to 69 years, participated in the study. One-month test-retest reliability for the General Admissions group ranged from .78 to .91 using both similar (paper-pencil) and dissimilar (computerized) retesting methods, with lower scores occurring on retest. Significantly lower scores were found for the Violent Admissions group as compared with the General Admissions group. Concurrent validity was examined in the Violent Admissions group using three anger/aggression measures and clinical ratings of eight anger dimensions. Stronger correlations with other similar anger measures than with negative affect indices revealed concurrent and discriminant validity. Implications for clinical use in an offender population are discussed.

Psychopathy and substance use in adolescent male offenders.

Previous research with incarcerated adult male offenders yielded correlations of .28 to .40 between measures of substance abuse and psychopathic characteristics. This comorbidity was replicated in 40 incarcerated adolescent male offenders. Drug and alcohol use was significantly correlated with the behavioral characteristics of psychopathy (r = .48 and .41, respectively).

The contingent negative variation in psychopaths.

There have been persistent claims that the contingent negative variation (CNV) is absent or greatly attenuated in psychopaths. However, these claims are based on a few studies with serious methodological and diagnostic problems. The present study attempted to avoid these problems. The subjects were male prison inmates divided into psychopaths and nonpsychopaths on the basis of scores on the Psychopathy Checklist. CNV was recorded while the subject performed a forewarned reaction time task with a relatively long interval (6 s) between the warning stimulus and the imperative stimulus. Motivation to perform well was ensured by having reaction times to the imperative stimulus determine how much money would be won or lost on a given trial. The early CNV of psychopaths was significantly larger than was that of the nonpsychopaths. There were no group differences in the late CNV or in reaction time. To the extent that the early CNV reflects processing of the warning stimulus and attention to task demands, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that psychopaths are proficient at focusing attention on events that interest them.