The Personality Assessment Inventory in U.S. Case Law: A Survey and Examination of Relevance to Legal Proceedings.

The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI), a popular measure of personality, psychopathology, and interpersonal functioning, has demonstrated utility to address various psycholegal questions. This case law review examines a large sample of randomly selected published U.S. case law decisions to ascertain how the PAI has been applied and considered by legal decision makers. The review indicates the instrument is popular in criminal and civil legal settings, particularly in preadjudication forensic mental health evaluations (e.g., competency to proceed) and cases considering social security disability benefits. Forensic evaluators and legal actors primarily consider the results of the PAI as indicators of examinee impression management, psychopathology, and interpersonal functioning, although this varied by psycholegal context. The admissibility of the instrument was rarely challenged, although some challenges to the forensic evaluator's interpretation and conclusions emerged. Despite the PAI's popularity, the utility of the instrument is determined by specific, empirically supported, contexts. As such, forensic evaluators must consider how the PAI may inform decision making given examinee characteristics and the psycholegal question.

Taking "the boss" into the real world: Field interrater reliability of the Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability: Adolescent Version.

There is emerging evidence that the performance of risk assessment instruments is weaker when used for clinical decision-making than for research purposes. For instance, research has found lower agreement between evaluators when the risk assessments are conducted during routine practice. We examined the field interrater reliability of the Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability: Adolescent Version (START:AV). Clinicians in a Dutch secure youth care facility completed START:AV assessments as part of the treatment routine. Consistent with previous literature, interrater reliability of the items and total scores was lower than previously reported in non-field studies. Nevertheless, moderate to good interrater reliability was found for final risk judgments on most adverse outcomes. Field studies provide insights into the actual performance of structured risk assessment in real-world settings, exposing factors that affect reliability. This information is relevant for those who wish to implement structured risk assessment with a level of reliability that is defensible considering the high stakes.

Classification accuracy of the rare symptoms and symptom combinations scales of the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology in three archival samples.

OBJECTIVE: The Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS; Widows & Smith, 2005) is a 75-item self-report measure intended to screen for potentially feigned symptoms of mental illness and/or cognitive impairment. We investigated the classification accuracy of 2 new detection scales (Rare Symptoms [RS] and Symptom Combinations [SC]) developed by Rogers, Robinson, and Gillard (2014) that appeared useful in identifying simulated mental disorder in their derivation sample of psychiatric inpatients. HYPOTHESIS: We hypothesized that the rates of classification accuracy Rogers et al. reported for these 2 scales would generalize to other samples in which the utility of the SIMS previously has been investigated. METHOD: We computed RS and SC scores from archival SIMS data collected as part of 3 research projects investigating malingering detection methods: (a) general population prison inmates and inmates in a prison psychiatric unit receiving treatment for mental disorder (N = 115), (b) college students (N = 196), and (3) community-dwelling adults (N = 48). RESULTS: Results supported the global classification accuracy of RS and SC but the suggested cut-score for both scales (>6) produced poor sensitivity. Lower potential cut-offs did, however, improve sensitivity to feigning somewhat while not excessively diminishing specificity. CONCLUSION: These results emphasize the importance of generalizability research when investigating the clinical utility of forensic mental health assessment methods, particularly specific decision rules used to classify individuals into discrete categories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

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.

Self- and informant perceptions of psychopathic traits in relation to the triarchic model.

OBJECTIVE: The validity of self-report psychopathy measures may be undermined by characteristics thought to be defining features of the construct, including poor self-awareness, pathological lying, and impression management. The current study examined agreement between self- and informant perceptions of psychopathic traits captured by the triarchic model (Patrick, Fowler, & Krueger, 2009) and the extent to which psychopathic traits are associated with socially desirable responding. METHOD: Participants were undergraduate roommate dyads (N = 174; Mage = 18.9 years; 64.4% female; 59.8% Caucasian) who completed self- and informant reports of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. RESULTS: Self-reports of psychopathic traits reasonably aligned with the perceptions of informants (rs = .36-.60), and both predicted various types of antisocial behaviors, although some associations were only significant for monomethod correlations. Participants viewed by informants as more globally psychopathic did not engage in greater positive impression management. However, this response style significantly correlated with self- and informant-reported boldness, suppressing associations with antisocial behavior. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that participants are willing and able to disclose psychopathic personality traits in research settings under conditions of confidentiality. Nonetheless, accounting for response style is potentially useful when using self-report measures to examine the nature and correlates of psychopathic traits.

Concurrent validity of the personality assessment screener in a large sample of offenders.

Mental health problems are disproportionately prevalent in forensic and correctional settings, and there have been numerous attempts to develop screening tools to evaluate individuals in such contexts. This study investigates the clinical utility of the Personality Assessment Screener (PAS; Morey, 1997), a brief self-report measure of risk for emotional and behavioral dysfunction, in a large mixed-gender offender sample (N = 1,658). The PAS is a 22-item measure derived from the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991, 2007), a more comprehensive self-report instrument widely used to assess for psychological disturbances among forensic and correctional populations. We examined the ability of the PAS to concurrently predict clinically significant elevations on the PAI and several other indicators of symptomatology and dysfunction. Collectively, results suggest that PAS total and element (subscale) scores show considerable promise in screening inmates for serious problems with emotional and behavioral functioning, though interpretive ranges used to categorize PAS scores in clinical and community settings may require revision for criminal justice populations. We discuss the applied value of the PAS for detecting specific areas of dysfunction relevant to risk management (e.g., aggression, suicidality) and for concentrating resources on offenders with the most immediate and severe need for psychological services. (PsycINFO Database Record

Triarchic Model Personality Traits and Their Impact on Mock Juror Perceptions of a White-Collar Criminal Defendant.

The triarchic model of psychopathy proposes that this personality disorder is composed of 3 relatively distinct constructs: meanness, disinhibition, and boldness. Although the first 2 components are widely accepted, boldness has generated considerable theoretical debate concerning its relevance-largely due to its association with various ostensibly adaptive characteristics and socially desirable behaviors (e.g., self-reported heroism). But is being bold actually perceived by others as an intrinsically adaptive, socially desirable personality trait? We investigated this question using a novel approach-a jury simulation study that manipulated the level of triarchic traits exhibited by a white-collar criminal. More specifically, 330 community members read a vignette in which the defendant's degree of boldness and disinhibition was manipulated and then provided sentence recommendations and other evaluative ratings. As hypothesized, manipulating boldness and disinhibition resulted in more negative views of the defendant, with the boldness manipulation more consistently predicting higher global psychopathy, "meanness," and "evil" ratings. Surprisingly, neither manipulation predicted sentence recommendations, although higher global psychopathy ratings did correlate with more punitive sentence recommendations. The presence of personality traits construed in some contexts as advantageous or socially desirable can be perceived as more dysfunctional and undesirable in other contexts-particularly when they cooccur with criminal behavior.

A Statistical Consideration Regarding the Threshold of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised.

The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003 ) is one of the most commonly used measures of psychopathy. Scores range from 0 to 40, and legal and mental health professionals sometimes rely on a cut score or threshold to classify individuals as psychopaths. This practice, among other things, assumes that all items contribute equally to the overall raw score. Results from an item response theory analysis (Bolt, Hare, Vitale, & Newman, 2004 ), however, indicate that PCL-R items differ in the amount of information they can provide about psychopathy. We examined the consequences of these item differences for using a cut score, detailing the consequences for a previously applied cut score of 30 as an example. Results indicated that there were more than 8.5 million different response combinations that equaled 30 and more than 14.2 million that equaled 30 or more. This raw score, like others, corresponded to a broad range of PCL-R-defined psychopathy, indicating that applying cut scores on this measure results in imprecise quantifications of psychopathy. We show that by using the item parameters along with an individual's particular scores on the PCL-R items, it is possible to arrive at a more precise understanding of an individual's level of psychopathy on this instrument.

PCL-R field validity in prison and hospital settings.

Recent field studies have questioned the interrater reliability (IRR) and predictive validity regarding (violent) recidivism of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Using a forensic psychiatric sample, the current study investigated discrepancies in scoring between hospital and prison settings, as well as differences in predictive validity across these two settings. PCL-R information was collected from prison and hospital files, resulting in 224 PCL-R total scores and 74 double scores. When examining repeated measurements, large individual differences were found together with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICCA,1) of .42 for the total score. Discrepant results were found for Factor 2, with repeated scores within the same setting having an ICCA,1 of .28 versus an ICCA,1 of .57 for repeated scores between settings. However, areas under the curve (AUCs) from receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses for total, factor and facet scores did not differ between settings. For the whole sample, Factor 2 scores marginally predicted violent and general recidivism after 2 years (AUC = .62 and .63), whereas Factor 1 did not predict (violent) recidivism. Consistent with recent studies from other countries, these results suggest inadequate field reliability and validity in prison and hospital settings in Flanders (Belgium). (PsycINFO Database Record

Effects of Mental Health and Neuroscience Evidence on Juror Perceptions of a Criminal Defendant: the Moderating Role of Political Orientation.

Several recent studies have examined the effects of mental health and neuroscientific evidence on attitudes toward criminal defendants, suggesting that these factors may influence juror decision-making in meaningful ways. Few studies to date have manipulated both of these variables while also considering theoretically important individual difference variables (e.g., political orientation). Using a criminal case simulation, this study manipulated the presence of evidence concerning mental disorders (psychopathy and schizophrenia) and increasing levels of neuroscientific detail regarding a defendant's brain injury, and examined verdicts and sentencing recommendations in over 400 persons attending jury duty. Main effects were detected for mental health testimony and political orientation, although interactions were noted as well. More negative reactions to defendants labeled as psychopaths were relatively consistent, whereas participants who identified as liberal generally were less punitive towards a defendant identified as schizophrenic than were more conservative jurors. Consistent with other recent research, juror perceptions of the defendant's level of psychopathic traits (independent of the effects of the experimental manipulations) predicted guilty verdicts and longer sentencing recommendations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Boldness and its relation to psychopathic personality: Prototypicality analyses among forensic mental health, criminal justice, and layperson raters.

Research on psychopathic personality has been dominated by a focus on criminality and social deviance, but some theoretical models argue that certain putatively adaptive features are important components of this construct. In 3 samples (forensic mental health practitioners, probation officers and a layperson community sample), we investigated adaptive traits as conceptualized in the Triarchic model of psychopathy (Patrick et al., 2009), specifically the relevance of boldness to construals of psychopathic personality. Participants completed prototypicality ratings of psychopathic traits, including 3 items created to tap components of boldness (Socially bold, Adventurous, Emotionally stable), and they also rated a series of attitudinal statements (e.g., perceived correlates of being psychopathic, moral judgments about psychopaths). The composite Boldness scale was rated as moderately to highly prototypical among forensic mental health practitioners and probation officers and positively associated with other theoretically relevant domains of psychopathy. Across samples, higher composite Boldness ratings predicted greater endorsement of adaptive traits (e.g., social skills) as characteristic of psychopathy. For the individual items, Socially bold was rated as highly prototypical and was associated with theoretically relevant correlates. Adventurous also was seen as prototypical, though to a lesser degree. Only forensic mental health practitioners endorsed Emotionally stable as characteristic of psychopathy. Our results provide partial support for the contention that the boldness concept is viewed as an important component of psychopathy, particularly among professionals who work directly with offender populations. (PsycINFO Database Record

DSM-5 antisocial personality disorder: predictive validity in a prison sample.

Symptoms of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), particularly remorselessness, are frequently introduced in legal settings as a risk factor for future violence in prison, despite a paucity of research on the predictive validity of this disorder. We examined whether an ASPD diagnosis or symptom-criteria counts could prospectively predict any form of institutional misconduct, as well as aggressive and violent infractions among newly admitted prisoners. Adult male (n = 298) and female (n = 55) offenders were recruited from 4 prison systems across the United States. At the time of study enrollment, diagnostic information was collected using the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV; APA, 1994) Axis II Personality Disorders (SCID-II; First, Gibbon, Spitzer, Williams, & Benjamin, 1997) supplemented by a detailed review of official records. Disciplinary records were obtained from inmates' respective prisons covering a 1-year period following study enrollment and misconduct was categorized hierarchically as any (general), aggressive (verbal/physical), or violent (physical). Dichotomous ASPD diagnoses and adult symptom-criteria counts did not significantly predict institutional misconduct across our 3 outcome variables, with effect sizes being close to 0 in magnitude. The symptom of remorselessness in particular showed no relation to future misconduct in prison. Childhood symptom counts of conduct disorder demonstrated modest predictive utility. Our results offer essentially no support for the claim that ASPD diagnoses can predict institutional misconduct in prison, regardless of the number of adult symptoms present. In forensic contexts, testimony that an ASPD diagnosis identifies defendants who will pose a serious threat while incarcerated in prison presently lacks any substantial scientific foundation.

"So, what is a psychopath?" Venireperson perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes about psychopathic personality.

This study surveyed over 400 individuals attending jury duty regarding various perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs they had concerning psychopathic personality (psychopathy). The protocol included (a) prototype ratings of what participants considered to be core features, using the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP) prototype rating scale; (b) questions concerning knowledge and beliefs about psychopathy (e.g., prevalence in society); and (c) attitudinal scales concerning potential associated features (e.g., criminality, rehabilitation potential), etiological underpinnings, and moral judgments and legal sanctions. Consistent with results of earlier studies using expert raters, jury panel members rated most of the 33 individual CAPP items and all 6 CAPP scales as at least moderately prototypical, with Self and Dominance domains obtaining the highest mean ratings. Many participants also strongly endorsed symptoms of psychosis (e.g., delusions) as prototypical of psychopathy. Despite this, they viewed psychopaths as responsible for their own actions, as capable of determining right from wrong, and as generally not "insane." Our findings indicate that jury panel members view the prototypical psychopath as highly dominant, self-focused, and lacking in remorse and empathy and reinforce the need for expert witnesses to clearly differentiate between psychopathy and psychotic-spectrum disorders.

The role and reliability of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised in U.S. sexually violent predator evaluations: a case law survey.

The civil commitment of offenders as sexually violent predators (SVPs) is a highly contentious area of U.S. mental health law. The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is frequently used in mental health evaluations in these cases to aid legal decision making. Although generally perceived to be a useful assessment tool in applied settings, recent research has raised questions about the reliability of PCL-R scores in SVP cases. In this report, we review the use of the PCL-R in SVP trials identified as part of a larger project investigating its role in U.S. case law. After presenting data on how the PCL-R is used in SVP cases, we examine the reliability of scores reported in these cases. We located 214 cases involving the PCL-R, 88 of which included an actual score and 29 of which included multiple scores. In the 29 cases with multiple scores, the intraclass correlation coefficient for a single evaluator for the PCL-R scores was only .58, and only 41.4% of the difference scores were within 1 standard error of measurement unit. The average score reported by prosecution experts was significantly higher than the average score reported by defense-retained experts, and prosecution experts reported PCL-R scores of 30 or above in nearly 50% of the cases, compared with less than 10% of the cases for defense witnesses (κ = .29). In conjunction with other recently published findings demonstrating the unreliability of PCL-R scores in applied settings, our results raise questions as to whether this instrument should be admitted into SVP proceedings.

Field reliability of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised among life sentenced prisoners in Sweden.

Although typically described as reliable and valid, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) has come under some criticism by researchers in the last half-decade due to evidence of poor interrater reliability and adversarial allegiance being reported in applied settings in North America. This study examines the field reliability of the PCL-R using a naturalistic test-retest design among a sample of Swedish life sentenced prisoners (N = 27) who had repeatedly been assessed as part of their application to receive a reduced prison term. The prisoners, who were assessed by a team of forensic evaluators retained by an independent government authority, had spent on average 14 years in prison with a mean time from Assessment 1 to Assessment 2 of 2.33 years. The overall reliability of the PCL-R (ICC(A1)) was .70 for the total score and .62 and .76 for Factor 1 and 2 scores, respectively. Facet 1-3 scores ranged from .54 to .60, whereas Facet 4 was much higher (.90). Reliability of individual items was quite variable, ranging from .23 to .80. In terms of potential causes of unreliability, both high and low PCL-R scores at the initial assessment tended to regress toward the mean at the time of the second evaluation. Our results are in line with previous research demonstrating concerns regarding the reliability of the PCL-R within judicial settings, even among independent evaluation teams not retained by a particular side in a case. Collectively, these findings question whether the interpersonal (Facet 1) and affective (Facet 2) features tapped by the PCL-R are reliable enough to justify their use in legal proceedings.

Forensic mental health professionals' perceptions of psychopathy: a prototypicality analysis of the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality in Sweden.

Assessments of psychopathic traits are used on a routine basis in forensic evaluations across Westernized countries. Despite this, consensus has not yet emerged concerning what exactly are the "core" features of this construct. Moreover, relatively little is known about how practitioners in the field construe this disorder. This study explored perceptions and attitudes regarding psychopathy among individuals working in the forensic mental health system (N = 90) in Sweden. Participants provided prototype ratings of what they considered to be core psychopathy features based on the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP), a model that increasingly is the focus of research in North America and Europe. The study protocol also included questions regarding (a) global perceptions and attitudes about a number of aspects of the psychopathy construct (e.g., personal experience, perceived prevalence), and (b) attitudinal scales that assessed perceived correlates of psychopathic traits across a variety of domains (e.g., violence proneness, treatment amenability) and moral judgments and attitudes concerning how psychopathic offenders should be treated within the legal system. The majority of the 33 individual CAPP items and the six CAPP scales were rated as at least moderately prototypical of psychopathy, with Dominance, Self, and Attachment domains obtaining the highest mean ratings. Participants viewed psychopaths as more likely to commit crimes than the average criminal, without being blatantly "evil" people. We believe our results help to advance our understanding of the psychopathy construct by exploring forensic professionals' perceptions of this disorder in general and in relation to the CAPP model specifically.

Personality assessment inventory (PAI) in forensic and correctional settings: A comprehensive review.

As Forensic Psychology continues to expand as an independent field, professionals regularly resort to psychological assessment tools to assess people involved within the justice system. The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is a 344-item, self-report inventory that aims to provide meaningful information for diagnosis and clinical decision-making, specifically relating to psychopathology, personality, and psychosocial environment. Its applicability in forensic settings has been increasingly recognized on account of its benefits in comparison to other self-report inventories (e.g., MMPI-2, MCMI-III), since it includes scales that are relevant to forensic settings (e.g., violence risk levels, psychopathy, substance abuse), and the existence of profile distortion indicators is useful when dealing with highly defensive and/or malingering populations. The goal of this paper is to conduct a thorough review of the PAI's utility in forensic settings, by focusing on the relevant forensic constructs assessed by the PAI (e.g., personality disorders, psychosis, substance abuse, aggression, recidivism risk, and response distortion), as well as its application to offender and inmate populations, intimate partner violence contexts, family law cases, and forensic professionals. Overall, the PAI continues to gather international recognition and its relevance and usefulness in forensic settings is generally accepted and acknowledged.

Construct measurement quality improves predictive accuracy in violence risk assessment: an illustration using the personality assessment inventory.

Much of the risk assessment literature has focused on the predictive validity of risk assessment tools. However, these tools often comprise a list of risk factors that are themselves complex constructs, and focusing on the quality of measurement of individual risk factors may improve the predictive validity of the tools. The present study illustrates this concern using the Antisocial Features and Aggression scales of the Personality Assessment Inventory (Morey, 1991). In a sample of 1,545 prison inmates and offenders undergoing treatment for substance abuse (85% male), we evaluated (a) the factorial validity of the ANT and AGG scales, (b) the utility of original ANT and AGG scales and newly derived ANT and AGG scales for predicting antisocial outcomes (recidivism and institutional infractions), and (c) whether items with a stronger relationship to the underlying constructs (higher factor loadings) were in turn more strongly related to antisocial outcomes. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) indicated that ANT and AGG items were not structured optimally in these data in terms of correspondence to the subscale structure identified in the PAI manual. Exploratory factor analyses were conducted on a random split-half of the sample to derive optimized alternative factor structures, and cross-validated in the second split-half using CFA. Four-factor models emerged for both the ANT and AGG scales, and, as predicted, the size of item factor loadings was associated with the strength with which items were associated with institutional infractions and community recidivism. This suggests that the quality by which a construct is measured is associated with its predictive strength. Implications for risk assessment are discussed.

Jury panel member perceptions of interpersonal-affective traits of psychopathy predict support for execution in a capital murder trial simulation.

Recent research with college undergraduate mock jurors suggests that how psychopathic they perceive a criminal defendant to be is a powerful predictor of whether they will support a death verdict in simulated capital murder trials. Perceived affective and interpersonal traits of psychopathy are especially predictive of support for capital punishment, with perceived remorselessness explaining a disproportionate amount of variance in these attitudes. The present study attempted to extend these findings with a more representative sample of community members called for jury duty (N = 304). Jurors reviewed a case vignette based on an actual capital murder trial, provided sentencing verdicts, and rated the defendant on several characteristics historically associated with the construct of psychopathy. Consistent with prior findings, remorselessness predicted death verdicts, as did the affective and interpersonal features of psychopathy - though the latter effect was more pronounced among jurors who were Caucasian and/or who described their political beliefs as moderate rather than conservative or liberal. Results are discussed in terms of the potentially stigmatizing effects of psychopathy evidence in capital cases.