Psychopathy

Study among 696 girls age 9-17 finds almost 5% high in psychopathy, and only 42% low in psychopathy (the rest being moderately psychopathic and high in interpersonal manipulation and egocentricity)

"Using a school-based community sample of 696 girls aged 9-17 years from Barbados and Grenada, the current study examined latent profiles of psychopathic personality traits and their associations with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Latent profile analysis (LPA) revealed four distinct psychopathy groups among girls, including a ‘low psychopathy’ group (41.9% of girls), ‘high psychopathy’ group (4.8%), ‘high interpersonal manipulation and egocentricity’ group (37.4%), and a ‘moderate psychopathy’ group (16%)."

(Boduszek, Daniel & Debowska, Agata & Willmott, Dominic & Jones, Adele & Delisi, Matt & Kirkman, Gillian. (2019). Is female psychopathy linked with child abuse? An empirical investigation using a person-centered approach. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse.)

Promiscuous women prefer narcissistic men

"Among non-contraceptive-using women, unrestricted sociosexuality was positively correlated with preference for high narcissistic male faces"

(Marcinkowska, Urszula M., Samuli Helle, and Minna T. Lyons. "Dark traits: Sometimes hot, and sometimes not? Female preferences for Dark Triad faces depend on sociosexuality and contraceptive use." Personality and Individual Differences 86 (2015): 369-373.)

One form of violent behavior often goes together with many others, and with psychopathy/sociopathy

"The literature strongly supports that those who engage in violent behavior tend to engage in violence in several areas, not just one specific type of violence. For example, domestic abusers often sexually abuse/ rape their partners; engage in child abuse, animal cruelty, road rage, and other forms of violent and nonviolent criminal behavior. (...)  As I examine the violent personality, it becomes clearer that those with any of the traits of the violent personality are likely sociopaths or psychopaths because the traits of sociopathy/psychopathy are shared with the violent personality. In short, it is important to assess for sociopathy/psychopathy in all who present with violent behaviors, tendencies or thoughts."

( Scott A Johnson, Licensed Psychologist, Forensic Consultation, "Understanding the violent personality: antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, & sociopathy explored", Forensic Research & Criminology International Journal, March 25, 2019)

Higher intelligence not significantly linked with less antisocial behavior in psychopats

"This study aimed to investigate the association between psychopathic traits, aggressive antisocial behaviors, and intelligence in young violent offenders and to test whether intelligence moderates the relationship between psychopathic traits and aggressive antisocial behaviors. Participants were 269 male violent offenders aged 18 to 25 years, assessed on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), the Life History of Aggression (LHA), and the General Ability Index from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 3rd edition. (...) We suggest that intelligence, however important for rehabilitation strategies and everyday functioning, is not necessarily pertinent to understanding aggressive antisocial behaviors in young offenders with psychopathic traits."

(González Moraga, Fernando Renee, Danilo Garcia, Eva Billstedt, and Märta Wallinius. "Facets of Psychopathy, Intelligence and Aggressive Antisocial Behaviors in Young Violent Offenders." Frontiers in Psychology 10 (2019): 984.)

Psychopathy associated with fear deficit

"Psychopathy is a constellation of distinct interpersonal (e.g., pathological lying), affective (e.g., lack of remorse), lifestyle (e.g., need for stimulation), and antisocial (e.g., poor behavioral controls) traits that contribute to a deceptive and exploitive personality profile. Current theoretical models attempting to explain the functional impairments and neural systems behind the behavioral profile of the disorder seem to converge on the idea of a fear deficit. (...) Research shows that, in response to a threatening  or  fearful  situation,  psychopathy  is  associated  with  a  reduced  capacity  to  experience  negative  valence,  diminished  autonomic  response, and difficulty in recognizing fear-related cues. In addition, psychopathy has also been implicated in abnormalities in the fear center of the brain, the limbic system. This includes structural, morphological, and functional alterations of limbic structures like the amygdala."

(Vasileia Karasavva, "The Fear Factor: Fear Deficits in Psychopathy as an Index of Limbic Dysregulation", Journal of young investigators, June 2019, Vol. 36 Issue 6, pp. 73-80, doi:10.22186/jyi.36.6.73-80)

23-33% of women in "foodie call" study score high on 'dark triad' of personality traits

"New psychology research reveals 23-33% of women in an online study say they've engaged in a 'foodie call,' where they set up a date for a free meal. These women score high on the 'dark triad' of personality traits as well."

(Society for Personality and Social Psychology. "Foodie calls: Dating for a free meal (rather than a relationship)." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 June 2019.)

Brain anatomical and functional features that characterize psychopathy

"In this review, we describe the brain anatomical and functional features that characterize psychopathy from a synthesis of available neuroimaging research and discuss how such brain anomalies may account for psychopathic behavior. The results are consistent in showing anatomical alterations involving primarily a ventral system connecting the anterior temporal lobe to anterior and ventral frontal areas, and a dorsal system connecting the medial frontal lobe to the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus complex and, in turn, to medial structures of the temporal lobe. Functional imaging data indicate that relevant emotional flow breakdown may occur in both these brain systems and suggest specific mechanisms via which emotion is anomalously integrated into cognition in psychopathic individuals during moral challenge. Directions for future research are delineated emphasizing, for instance, the relevance of further establishing the contribution of early life stress to a learned blockage of emotional self-exposure, and the potential role of androgenic hormones in the development of cortical anomalies."

(Pujol, J., Harrison, B. J., Contreras-Rodriguez, O., & Cardoner, N. (2019). The contribution of brain imaging to the understanding of psychopathy. Psychological medicine, 49(1), 20-31.)

Heritability of psychopathy

"In the past twenty years, first studies that provide evidence of the genetic basis of psychopathy have been conducted. The first known heritability study of psychopathic features was performed on sample 3687 a couple of twins at age 7 [5] showed that there is a high heritability (67%) of antisocial behavior accompanied by callous-unemotional traits that are considered developmental predictors of psychopathy [6]. These traits are stable and include lack of guilt and empathy, shallow affect, impulsivity, aggression and deficits in verbal intelligence. The results of the study [7] showed that genetic factors were the significant effect on the affective-interpersonal factor of psychopathy (heritability in boys was 64%, and girls 49%), as well as on the impulse-antisocial factor (heritability in boys was 46% and in girls 58%). Moleculargenetic studies also confirm the existence of the genetic basis of psychopathy [8,9]. A positive relationship between genetic risk and psychopathy traits measured by FFM conceptualization of psychopathy was found in the study conducted by Beaver et al. [10]. Furthermore, genetic factors were explained between .37 and .44 of the variances in measures of psychopathy. Earlier studies which used different measures of psychopathy also showed an important role of genetic factors in etiology of psychopathy [11,12]."

(Sokic, Katarina. "The Role of Heritability in the Development of Psychopathy." Peer Reviewed Journal Of Forensic & Genetic Sciences 3, no. 3 (2019): 214-215.)

Distinctive brain deficits in psychopathy

"Empirical work suggests that psychopathy and Cluster B disorders are implicated in antisocial behavior across gender, and that neurobiological correlates of personality may inform such behavior. (...) Co-morbidity across these conditions may be partly explained by similar frontal deficits, reflective of disinhibition. Affective processing abnormalities appear to be characterized by distinct deficits in limbic/paralimbic regions, reflecting differential etiological underpinnings and behavioral outcomes."

(Edwards, Bethany G., Jessica R. Carre, and Kent A. Kiehl. "A review of psychopathy and Cluster B personality traits and their neural correlates in female offenders." Biological Psychology (2019): 107740.)

Psychopathy linked to genes that are also linked to autism

"Psychopathy is an extreme form of antisocial behavior, with about 1% prevalence in the general population, and 10-30% among incarcerated criminal offenders. Although the heritability of severe antisocial behavior is up to 50%, the genetic background is unclear. The underlying molecular mechanisms have remained unknown but several previous studies suggest that abnormal glucose metabolism and opioidergic neurotransmission contribute to violent offending and psychopathy. Here we show using iPSC-derived cortical neurons and astrocytes from six incarcerated extremely antisocial and violent offenders, three nonpsychopathic individuals with substance abuse, and six healthy controls that there are robust alterations in the expression of several genes and immune response-related molecular pathways which were specific for psychopathy. In neurons, psychopathy was associated with marked upregulation of RPL10P9 and ZNF132, and downregulation of CDH5 and OPRD1. In astrocytes, RPL10P9 and MT-RNR2 were upregulated. Expression of aforementioned genes explained 30-92% of the variance of psychopathic symptoms. The gene expression findings were confirmed with qPCR. These genes may be relevant to the lack of empathy and emotional callousness seen in psychopathy, since several studies have linked these genes to autism and social interaction."

("Neurobiological roots of psychopathy", Jari Tiihonen, Marja Koskuvi, Markku Lähteenvuo, Pekka L. J. Virtanen, Ilkka Ojansuu, Olli Vaurio, Yanyan Gao, Ida Hyötyläinen, Katja A. Puttonen, Eila Repo-Tiihonen, Tiina Paunio, Marja-Riitta Rautiainen, Sasu Tyni, Jari Koistinaho & Šárka Lehtonen, Molecular Psychiatry 2019)

Dark triad traits (psychopathy, Machiavellism, narcissism) associated with number of matings and sexual partners in men, and with infidelity and extra-pair mating in women

"D3 [Dark Triad] and TriPM [Triarchic Psychopathy Measure] measures were generally more strongly correlated with sexual behavior for males in ways that might increase numbers of matings and sexual partners, but were more strongly correlated with intention towards infidelity and sociosexual attitudes for females—in ways that might facilitate extra-pair mating."

(Moore, Kevin E., Scott R. Ross, and Evelyn C. Brosius. "The role of gender in the relations among Dark Triad and psychopathy, sociosexuality, and moral judgments." Personality and Individual Differences 152 (2020): 109577.)

Genetic and biological factors of antisocial and criminal behavior (systematic review)

"[G]enetic factors comprise almost 50.0% of the variance in antisocial behaviour whereas shared environment contributes approximately 10.0% of the variance in antisocial outcomes. (...) Recent research has demonstrated that certain genetic polymorphisms have been linked to diverse antisocial behaviour namely; (i) childhood conduct disorder, (ii) ADHD and (iii) adulthood violent behaviour (Moffitt et al. 2011). In addition, scholars have also identified that dopamine levels are significantly correlated with violent behaviour (Schwab-Reese et al. 2017). Adding to this, diverse studies have suggested that 10-repeat allele is closely linked with delinquency among men and escalate sensitivity to the environment when homozygous (two 10-repeat alleles) (Bakermans-Kranenburg et al. 2011).
Genetic risk factors (i.e., dopamine and serotonin) play a vital role in the etiology of criminal, antisocial behaviour and delinquency (Ferguson 2010; Schilling et al. 2011). According to Beaver et al. (2010), two genes that have acquired much attention in the literature is known as; (i) MAOA and (ii) DAT1. As such Fergusson et al. (2012) has identified that MAOA moderates the effects of childhood maltreatment and school dropout on violent and property related crime; subsequently predicts criminal convictions later in adolescence. Relatively, it has been discovered that DAT1 along with 5-HTT predicts chronic criminal behaviour among adults (i.e., sensation seeking, risk taking) (Beaver & Belsky 2012).
Contemporary biosocial studies have found that serotonin is also related to criminal violence (Heinz et al. 2005). Generally, serotonin elevates the brain activities which is associated with feelings of contentment and calmness (Liao et al. 2004). However, it has been identified that low level of serotonin causes gloomy and irritability. According to Gottschalk and Ellis (2009) impulsive violence is more prevalence among individual with a low level of serotonin activity. Besides serotonin, testosterone (T) which is largely known as a steroid hormone (androgen) also contributes towards aggression and violence behaviour among male (Reynolds et al. 2007). In addition, recent findings have identified that reduction of cognitive empathy caused by exogenous testosterone further predicts criminality especially among male with low digits ratios (2D:4D)
(Jolliffe et al. 2004; Honekopp et al. 2011; Carre et al. 2015).
Substantial evidence implicates that genes contributes nearly half of the variance in antisocial behaviour, while the remaining variance is influenced by nonshared environment factors (Ferguson 2010). Findings from Gene-Environment (G X E) research has stipulated that the effects of a genetic risk factor on antisocial behaviour will vary across individual based on their exposure level to environmental risk factors. In short, individuals who are at-risk and more “vulnerable” is prone to response towards environmental influences (...)."

(Tharshini, N. K. "Linking Genetic and Aggression Factors with Criminal Behaviour: A Systematic Review." JURNAL PSIKOLOGI MALAYSIA 33, no. 1 (2019).)

Psychopathy associated with misogyny

"Psychopathy is associated with a variety of negative attitudes and behaviours towards women (...)
[The results of this study] may suggest that individuals high in psychopathic traits see women as sub-human, this dehumanizing appraisal may be facilitating attitudes and behaviours that are consistent with the idea that women are less than human and deserve to be treated as such."

(Methot-Jones, Tabitha, Angela Book, and Nathalie Y. Gauthier. "Less than human: psychopathy, dehumanization, and sexist and violent attitudes towards women." Personality and Individual Differences 149 (2019): 250-260.)

Machiavellian teens are the most popular

"In a novel longitudinal study, researchers identified three distinct types of teen popularity: prosocial popular; aggressive popular; and bistrategic popular or Machiavellian. These naughty and nice Machiavellian-like teens were the most popular and were above average on physical and relational aggression as well as prosocial behavior. Just like the 'Mean Girls' in the iconic American teen comedy, they are aggressive when needed and then quickly 'make nice' to smooth out any ruffled feathers."

(Florida Atlantic University. "Three faces of teen popularity: Being feared, being loved, and being feared and loved: Study identifies distinct types of teen popularity; 'Machiavellian-like' teens are the most popular." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 September 2019.)

Psychopaths self-report being good at Leadership, Logical Thinking, Focus, Management, Money Smart, Composure and Extraversion

"Participants were 2,291 French college students who completed self-report questionnaires. A cluster analysis, based on a 4-factor model of psychopathy (Antagonism, Narcissism, Disinhibition, and Emotional Stability), was performed on a subsample with increased psychopathic traits (n = 378) and yielded 3 distinct groups: a primary psychopathy cluster, a secondary psychopathy cluster, and an emotionally stable-low antagonism cluster. The primary psychopathy cluster displayed the highest scores of Leadership, Logical Thinking, Focus, Management, and Money Smart, whereas the emotionally stable-low antagonism cluster had the highest scores of Composure and Extraversion."

(BRONCHAIN, J.; RAYNAL, P.; CHABROL, H. Heterogeneity of adaptive features among psychopathy variants. Personality disorders, 2019.)

Grandiose narcissism associated with less feeling stressed and being less vulnerable to depression

"People who have grandiose narcissistic traits are more likely to be 'mentally tough', feel less stressed and are less vulnerable to depression, research led by Queen's University Belfast has found."
(...)
He adds: "Individuals high on the spectrum of dark traits, such as narcissism, engage in risky behaviour, hold an unrealistic superior view of themselves, are overconfident, show little empathy for others, and have little shame or guilt."

(Queen's University Belfast. "Narcissism can lower stress levels and reduce chances of depression." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 October 2019.)

Severity of psychopathy is positively associated with extent of cavum septum pellucidum

"Recent structural findings particularly bring clarity to the literature. First, they reinforce previous work indicating that severity of psychopathy is positively associated with extent of cavum septum pellucidum. This suggests psychopathy is associated with early neurodevelopmental disruption within limbic structures."

(Blair, Robert James R., and Ru Zhang. "Recent neuro-imaging findings with respect to conduct disorder, callous-unemotional traits and psychopathy." Current opinion in psychiatry (2019).)

Psychopathy associated with belief in conspiracy theories

"The total regression model indicated odd beliefs/magical thinking, trait Machiavellianism, and primary psychopathy were significant, positive predictors of belief in conspiracy theories. (...) Results of the current study highlight individuals who might be more susceptible to believing conspiracy theories. Specifically, these results indicate that the individual more likely to believe in conspiracy theories may have unusual patterns of thinking and cognitions, be strategic and manipulative, and display interpersonal and affective deficits."

(March, Evita, and Jordan Springer. "Belief in conspiracy theories: The predictive role of schizotypy, Machiavellianism, and primary psychopathy." PLoS One 14, no. 12 (2019): e0225964.)

Overview of psychopathy: characteristics, incidence, biology, successful psychopaths

"Psychopaths are characterized as dominant, manipulative, selfish individuals who disregard how the negative consequences of their actions impact others (Pozzulo, Bennell, & Forth, 2017). While it is believed that around one percent of the general population in the U.S. meet the criteria of psychopathy (that is, around onein every 150 people), the propensity in prison is much higher, ataround 15 to 35 percent of theinmate population (Kiehl & Hoffman, 2011). Given the disproportionate number of psychopaths in prison, most of the research surroundingpsychopathy has been focused on the prison population, even whilea small fraction of psychopaths are imprisoned for committingviolent crimes. This means that the greater percentage of psychopaths are non-violent, and notnecessarily criminals (Berg, Smith, Watts, Ammirati, Green, & Lilienfeld, 2013). Given these statistics, researchers have recently started to study psychopathy in populations not related to the criminal justice system, such asbusiness and industrial workers, lawyers, and the healing professions(Blickle & Schütte, 2017; Smith, Lilienfeld, Coffey, & Dabbs, 2013; Volmer, Koch, & Göritz, 2016).
(...)
With the growing contributions and overlapping work between neuroscience and psychology, modern research on psychopathy is influenced by neuroscience. Indeed, neuroscientists discovered that the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are dysfunctional in the psychopathic brain (Greene & Haidt, 2002; Kiehl et al., 2004; Koenigset al., 2011; Viding, McCrory, & Seara, 2014), which is thought to have an effect on difficulties with moral decision making and empathy responses. Other researchers found indications that, in addition to dysfunctional activity in the amygdala and vcPFC, there is decreased grey matter in these two brain parts of psychopaths (Ermer et al., 2012). Other findings suggest that there are fewer neurons and increased white matter in the frontal lobes of psychopaths (Yang et al., 2005).Given findings that suggests that psychopaths share neurological traits, it is becoming easier to diagnose the disorder using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Kiehl& Hoffman, 2011). Also, fMRI data suggests that amongst the abnormalities in the brains of psychopaths, there is decreased neural activity in the paralimbic regions of the brain (Kiehl, 2006). Notably, the neuropsychological research has suggested that psychopathy can be determined by abnormality in the development of the brain (Gao, Glenn, Schug, Yang, & Raine, 2009). Such findingsimplythat the development of the disorder has biological and chemical influences.
(...)
it is possible to combine the overlapping characterizations, and define the successful psychopath as an individual with adaptive psychopathic traits who successfully avoids, or feels no desire to engage in,antisocial and criminal behavior that would otherwise result in imprisonment (Hall & Benning, 2006). Although these individuals theoretically meet the criteria for psychopathy, they are nonetheless able to achieve success in their personal and professional life. However, such successmay be achieved at the expense of others (Benning, Venables, & Hall, 2018)."

("Positive Psychopathy", Felipe Rubim, Lucas Rubim, & Renee Thornton, pre-publication 2019)

Psychopathy associated with dehumanization of women

"Study 1 (n= 514) and Study 2 (n= 202) provided evidence that psychopathy demonstrated an indirect relationship with sexist and violent attitudes towards women via dehumanization. (...)  Finally, Study 3 (n= 206), again using a mixed sample, attempted to manipulate dehumanization to see if it, and the sexist and violent attitudes associated with it, would be mitigated. Unfortunately, the manipulation failed (...). Across three studies results suggested that the path from psychopathy to negative attitudes towards women was at least partially (if not fully) indirect through dehumanization."

(Methot-Jones, Tabitha. "INHUMAN TARGETS: Psychopathy, Dehumanization, and Sexist and Violent Attitudes Towards Women." (2019).)

Cyber-agression associated with psychopathy

"This study hypothesized that there would be a significant relationship between cyber-aggression and psychopathy, such that higher psychopathy levels would correspond to higher cyber-aggression levels. 231 non-incarcerated participants completed the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM) and the Cyber-Aggression Questionnaire for Adolescents (CYBA). Potential confounding variables, such as gender, social adversity and number of social media platforms used, were considered. Bivariate and multivariate regression results supported the hypothesis. Gender and the number of social media platforms used were also found to be significantly associated with cyber-aggression, after taking psychopathy into account."

(Wong, Nataniel. "Unveiling the unknown: a study of the relationship between psychopathy and cyber-aggression." (2019).)

Disregard for others in toddlers predicts psychopathic traits 20 years later

"The present study examined empathy deficits in toddlerhood (age 14 to 36 months) as predictors of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) symptoms and psychopathy measured by the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy scale (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995) in adulthood (age 23 years) in 956 individuals from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study. Consistent with the hypothesis that antisocial behavior is associated with “active” rather than “passive” empathy deficits, early disregard for others, not lack of concern for others, predicted later ASPD symptoms. Early disregard for others was also significantly associated with factor 1 of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, which includes items assessing interpersonal and affective deficits, but not with factor 2, which includes items assessing impulsivity and poor behavioral control. The association between early disregard for others and psychopathy factor 2 was near zero after controlling for the shared variance between psychopathy factors 1 and 2. These results suggest that there is a propensity toward adulthood ASPD symptoms and psychopathy factor 1 that can be assessed early in development, which may help identify individuals most at risk for stable antisocial outcomes."

(Rhee, S. H., Woodward, K., Corley, R. P., du Pont, A., Friedman, N. P., Hewitt, J. K., ... & Zahn-Waxler, C. The association between toddlerhood empathy deficits and antisocial personality disorder symptoms and psychopathy in adulthood. Development and Psychopathology, 1-11.)

Fearlessness and externalizing proneness in psychopathy associated with neurophysiological brain mechanisms

"Overall, distinct psychopathic traits were found to be associated with distinct neurophysiological correlates of threat conditioning and response inhibition. This is consistent with models of psychopathy entailing trait fearlessness and externalizing proneness, and related brain mechanisms, as distinct processes underlying the expression of psychopathic traits."

(Paiva, T. O., Almeida, P. R., Coelho, R. C., Pasion, R., Barbosa, F., Ferreira‐Santos, F., ... & Marques‐Teixeira, J. The neurophysiological correlates of the triarchic model of psychopathy: An approach to the basic mechanisms of threat conditioning and inhibitory control. Psychophysiology, e13567.)

Psychopathy as a factor in extremism

(Guidère, M. (2020). Extremist Psychopathy: Violence Risk Assessment. The Journal of Applied Research in Human & Social Sciences, 2(1), 11-26.)

Conspiracy beliefs associated with Machiavellianism and psychopathy

"We recruited 406 UK participants to take part in an online survey investigating personality and Covid-19 information. Machiavellianism and primary psychopathy positively predicted general and Covid specific conspiracy beliefs (...)."

(Hughes, S., & Machan, L. It's a conspiracy: Covid-19 conspiracies link to psychopathy, Machiavellianism and collective narcissism. Personality and Individual Differences, 171, 110559.)