Two subtypes of psychopathic violent offenders that parallel primary and secondary variants.

Abstract

Although psychopathy usually is treated as a unitary construct, a seminal theory posits that there are 2 variants: Primary psychopathy is underpinned by an inherited affective deficit, whereas secondary psychopathy reflects an acquired affective disturbance. The authors investigated whether psychopathy phenotypically may be disaggregated into such types in a sample of 367 prison inmates convicted of violent crimes. Model-based cluster analysis of the Revised Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 2003) and trait anxiety scores in the psychopathic subgroup (n = 123; PCL-R > or = 29) revealed 2 clusters. Relative to primary psychopaths, secondary psychopaths had greater trait anxiety, fewer psychopathic traits, and comparable levels of antisocial behavior. Across validation variables, secondary psychopaths manifested more borderline personality features, poorer interpersonal functioning (e.g., irritability, withdrawal, poor assertiveness), and more symptoms of major mental disorder than primary psychopaths. When compared with the nonpsychopathic subgroup (n = 243), the 2 psychopathic variants manifested a theoretically coherent pattern of differences. Implications for etiological research and violence prevention are discussed.

Examining relations between psychopathology and psychopathy dimensions among adolescent female and male offenders

“…Skeem and colleagues found in their sample of 367 adult male prison inmates that secondary psychopaths manifested more borderline personality features, poorer interpersonal functioning (e.g. irritability, withdrawal, poor assertiveness), more symptoms of major mental disorder, greater trait anxiety, and fewer psychopathic traits than primary psychopaths, but levels of antisocial behaviour that were comparable to theirs [62].…”

“…Other researchers have approached this issue by positing two distinct kinds of antisocial individuals: primary and secondary psychopaths. They [4,43,62] have characterized the primary subtype by low anxiety and antisocial behavior due to a lack of conscience, and the secondary subtype by negative affect and impulsivity due to a neurotic conflict. Our results could be used as indicator that girls may be elaborate to the secondary subtype.…”

Violence Exposure Mediates the Relation Between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Offending Patterns in Adolescents

“…There is also a well-established relationship between psychopathic traits and substance abuse. For example, individuals with secondary psychopathy, which is associated with trauma exposure as detailed above, consistently show high rates of substance abuse pathology (Blackburn & Coid, 1998;Skeem, Johansson, Andershed, Kerr, & Louden, 2007;Smith & Newman, 1990;Vassileva, Kosson, Abramowitz, & Conrod, 2005). Thus, it is possible that victimization and exposure to violence could also explain the association between CU traits and drug offenses.…”

Finding groups using model-based cluster analysis: Heterogeneous emotional self-regulatory processes and heavy alcohol use risk.

“…If the best fitting model indicates one cluster, then the dataset is multivariate normal and does not contain a mixture of heterogeneous subpopulations. The use of model-based cluster analysis has emerged in recent years in psychology-related empirical research (e.g., Hicks, Markon, Patrick, Krueger, & Newman, 2004;Mun et al, 2008;Skeem, Johansson, Andershed, Kerr, & Louden, 2007). The current study, however, is one of the first papers to characterize this method in the context of more traditional cluster analysis approaches, structural equation models, and emerging finite mixture models, and to detail its use as a new alternative method for the person-oriented and pattern-oriented approaches used by developmental researchers (see also Mun et al, 2008).…”