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The reliability and validity of the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R) was examined in a sample of 528 nonpsychotic female offenders participating in a study assessing the generalizability of the instrument to females using personality, attitudinal, and laboratory behavioral measures. Results showed good interrater reliability and adequate internal consistency. Correlations with a number of self-report validity measures and previous criminal behavior provide support for the convergent validity of the instrument. A lack of association with general psychopathology provides support for the discriminant validity of the instrument. However, significant correlations with anxiety, negative affectivity, and intelligence run counter to expectations and to findings with male offenders. Furthermore, the low base rate of psychopathy in this sample, relative to base rates among male prisoners, raises the concern that either psychopathy is less prevalent in females than in males or the PCL–R is not adequately assessing the construct in female offenders.

Levenson, Kiehl, and Fitzpatrick's Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRPS) is evaluated to determine the factor structure and concurrent validity of the instrument among 430 federal female inmates. Confirmatory factor analysis fails to validate the expected 2-factor structure. Subsequent exploratory factor analysis reveals a 3-factor structure (egocentric, antisocial, and callous), where each factor accounts for significant variance in scores on several theoretically relevant measures. Higher scores on the antisocial factor of the LSRPS are associated with a history of varied psychopathological and negative legal outcomes, suggesting evidence of concurrent validity. However, the egocentric and callous factors do not seem to measure precisely the same construct as the primary psychopathy factor from the Levenson et al. study. The 3-factor structure proposed here has been proposed by other researchers and found in other samples of psychopathy in female inmates. Implications for both research and clinical practice using the LSRPS with female inmates are discussed.

Damasio and colleagues (A. R. Damasio, 1994; A. R. Damasio, D. Tranel, & H. Damasio, 1990) have theorized about a possible relationship between somatic markers and the behavior of psychopathic individuals (Ps), but, to date, there are no published data regarding the proposed relationship. The authors assessed 86 Caucasian and 71 African American male offenders using R. D. Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist--Revised and used a modified version of Bechara and colleagues' (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994; A. Bechara, H. Damasio, D. Tranel, & A. R. Damasio, 1997) gambling task to test the hypothesis that Ps would, consistent with the somatic marker hypothesis, fail to become risk averse. Results indicated that level of anxiety, but not psychopathy, was predictive of response choices. Several limitations and implications of the study are noted.

Individuals identified as psychopathic using Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised (PCL‐R) are of interest to forensic psychologists because of the high risk that they will engage in antisocial behavior (Hart, 1998). Existing crime data suggest that the PCL‐R is a measure with great clinical utility, but evidence concerning the etiology of the PCL‐R psychopath is less consistent. We propose that one potential source of the inconsistent evidence is that psychopathy is a construct, like mental retardation, that is etiologically heterogeneous. We suggest that the development of effective clinical interventions will require psychologists to (a) question the assumption that psychopathy is an etiologically homogeneous entity, (b) identify etiologically distinct variants of psychopathy for study, and (c) specify etiological mechanisms that may suggest tangible treatment targets. We discuss two complementary strategies for identifying etiological variants of psychopathy: (a) using general personality theory to identify specific psychopathic traits for study and (b) isolating specific bio‐psychological mechanisms that possess the potential to explain specific psychopathic syndromes.

Levenson's Self-Report Psychopathy scale (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995) was administered to 1,972 male and female federal prison inmates, the results of which were subjected to taxometric analysis. We employed 4 taxometric procedures in this study: mean above minus below a cut (Meehl & Yonce, 1994), maximum slope (Grove & Meehl, 1993), maximum eigenvalue (Waller & Meehl, 1998), and latent-mode factor analysis (Waller & Meehl, 1998). The results showed consistent support for a dimensional interpretation of the latent structure of psychopathy, corroborating previous research conducted on the Psychopathy Checklist (e.g., Psychopathy Checklist-Revised; Hare, 2003) and Psychopathic Personality Inventory (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996) and denoting that psychopathy is a dimensional construct (degree of psychopathic characteristics) rather than a qualitatively distinct category of behavior (psychopath).

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Research on psychopathy in women has generated equivocal laboratory findings. This study examined the performance of psychopathic women in 2 laboratory tasks designed to assess abnormal selective attention associated with response modulation deficits: a computerized pictureword (PW) task, and a picture-word Stroop (PW Stroop) task. Consistent with data from psychopathic men, women receiving high scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 1991) displayed reduced Stroop interference on the PW and PW Stroop tasks. Results suggest that despite some differences in the expression of psychopathy across gender, psychopathic women are characterized by selective attention abnormalities predicted by the response modulation hypothesis and similar to those exhibited by psychopathic men. Keywordspsychopathy; response modulation; women; attention Psychopathic individuals assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991) are characterized by callous, antisocial behaviors and attitudes; an apparent inability to forge or maintain emotional connections with others; and a failure to accept responsibility for their actions (Cleckley, 1976). Understanding the etiology of this syndrome has become a goal of researchers in both criminal justice and psychopathology (Hare, 1996).The emergence of reliable and valid assessments of psychopathy in the past 20 years has enabled systematic investigation of the emotional, behavioral, and attentional abnormalities associated with this disorder (Hare, 1996). Such research has revealed emotion processing deficits in startle-probe paradigms (Levenston, Patrick, Bradley, & Lang, 2000;Patrick, 1994;Sutton, Vitale, & Newman, 2002), countdown to punishment paradigms measuring changes in electrodermal activity (Hare, Frazelle, & Cox, 1978;Ogloff & Wong, 1990), and lexical decision tasks assessing emotion facilitation (Lorenz & Newman, 2002a;Williamson, Harpur, & Hare, 1991 show deficient behavioral inhibition as assessed by response perseveration in the presence of punishment cues (Newman, Patterson, & Kosson, 1987) and by poor passive avoidance on go/no-go discrimination tasks involving rewards and punishments (Lykken, 1957;Newman & Kosson, 1986;Newman & Schmitt, 1998;Thornquist & Zuckerman, 1995). Finally, psychopathic individuals exhibit abnormalities in attention processing, particularly when stimuli are secondary or peripheral to their primary focus of selective attention (Hare & Jutai, 1988;Hiatt, Schmitt, & Newman, 2004;Newman, Schmitt, & Voss, 1997).The response modulation hypothesis (RMH; Gorenstein & Newman, 1980;Newman & Lorenz, 2003;Patterson & Newman, 1993) proposes that these abnormalities in psychopathic individuals' emotional and behavioral responding are associated with an underlying information processing deficit involving the relatively automatic shift of attention from the effortful organization and implementation of goal-directed behavior to the evaluation of that behavior. According to the model, a deficit in response modulation interferes with the...