NCJ Number
150389
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 9 Issue: 3 Dated: (September 1994) Pages: 330-349
Date Published
1994
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This study of community psychopaths used two childhood history taxon items to identify subjects who would have a high probability of meeting the criteria for taxon membership using the entire set of 16 items.
Abstract
All subjects completed the Impulsiveness Scale, the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and the Socialization Scale from the California Psychological Inventory. Subjects were also interviewed regarding their school, occupational, and social history. The 30 respondents were divided into even groups, one with a low probability of exhibiting characteristics of psychopathy and one with a high probability. The subjects of the high group reported more criminal involvement than did subjects in earlier community studies. Their Socialization Scale scores were less than one point higher than those in a sample of prison inmates and about three points lower than those in other community samples. While the Impulsiveness Scale scores differentiated the high and low groups, scores for both groups were extremely high. A card-playing experiment, in which subjects from the high group did not perseverate, conflicted with results of earlier studies, raising the possibility that psychopaths do not suffer from a failure of response modulation, as previously believed. 2 tables and 19 references