Social anhedonia, a tendency toward experiencing social stimuli as less positive or pleasurable, is associated with maladaptive personality traits, poor interpersonal functioning, and psychopathology, and is typically elevated in males compared with females. However, the correlates of social anhedonia in youth have not been well defined. In this…

When meeting someone at zero acquaintance, we make assumptions about each other that encompass emotional states, personality traits, and even cognitive abilities. Evidence suggests individuals can accurately detect psychopathic personality traits in strangers based on short video clips or photographs of faces. We present an in-depth examination of…

Investigating heterogeneity in antisocial behavior early in life is essential for understanding the etiology, development, prognosis, and treatment of these problems. Data from the longitudinal National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) study of Early Child Care were used to identify homogeneous groups of young antisocial children…

Several studies have concluded that scores from Hare's (2003) Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (PCL-R) predict reoffense among sexual offenders, but most of those studies examined the predictive validity of scores from trained research staff, not clinicians in the field scoring the measure as part of actual forensic assessments. Therefore, we…

Psychopathy is a clinical construct defined by a cluster of personality traits and behaviors, including grandiosity, egocentricity, deceptiveness, shallow emotions, lack of empathy or remorse, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and a tendency to ignore or violate social norms. The majority of empirical research on psychopathy involves forensic…

In our article (J. L. Skeem & D. J. Cooke, 2010), we outlined the dangers inherent in conflating the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. Hare, 1991) with psychopathy itself. In their response, R. Hare and C. Neumann (2010) seemed to agree with key points that the PCL-R should not be confused with psychopathy and that criminal behavior is not…

This study investigated raters' personality traits in relation to scores they assigned to offenders using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). A total of 22 participants, including graduate students and faculty members in clinical psychology programs, completed a PCL-R training session, independently scored four criminal offenders using the…

The utility of psychopathy measures in predicting violence is largely explained by their assessment of social deviance (e.g., antisocial behavior; disinhibition). A key question is whether social deviance "interacts" with the core interpersonal-affective traits of psychopathy to predict violence. Do core psychopathic traits multiply the (already…

The present study investigates five types of continuity of personality and internalizing and externalizing problems (i.e., structural, differential, mean-level, individual-level and ipsative continuity) in a sample of referred children and adolescents (N = 114) with a broad variety of psychological problems. Mothers were administered a child…

Interpersonal characteristics are core features of the psychopathy construct which have a unique pattern of correlations with a variety of external correlates. To improve the assessment of interpersonal traits, the current study evaluated the internal structure of the Interpersonal Measure of Psychopathy (IM-P) through exploratory and confirmatory…

Previous studies have suggested that offenders have lowered verbal intelligence compared to their performance intelligence. This phenomenon has been linked traditionally to childhood risk factors (e.g. deficient education, abuse and neglect). Substantial discrepancies between performance intelligence quotients (PIQ) and verbal intelligence…

There is considerable debate about the assessment of psychopathic traits in adolescence due in part to questions regarding the stability of traits. We investigated the 6-month stability of psychopathic traits in a sample of 83 male adolescent offenders using an augmented protocol for the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version and the self-report…

Objective: To evaluate the social and emotional adjustment of 219 children in families with varying levels of intimate partner violence (IPV) using a model of risk and protection. To explore factors that differentiate children with poor adjustment from those with resilience. Methodology: Mothers who experienced IPV in the past year and their…

Psychopaths represent a significant management challenge in a prison population. A sample of ninety-five male inmates from three medium security prisons was tested using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV). Using traditional criteria, 22% of the inmates were classified as psychopaths. Scores on the two factor dimensions of…

Numerous studies conducted with offender or forensic psychiatric samples have revealed that individuals with psychopathic traits are at risk for violence and other externalizing psychopathology. These traits appear to be continuously distributed in these samples, leading investigators to speculate on the presence of such traits in the general…