Deck 11: B: Psychopaths

Question 1

List the five recommendations identified by Quayle (2008)to use when interviewing a psychopathic suspect.

Answer 1

■ Ensure case familiarity (interrogators should be extremely familiar with the evidence
to counteract the psychopath's evasiveness and deceitfulness)
■ Convey experience and confidence (interrogators need to be able to control the
interview and create an atmosphere of authority)
■ Show liking or admiration (psychopaths respond to thinking that interrogators
want to learn from them; this apparent desire to learn encourages psychopaths to
keep talking)
■ Avoid criticism (psychopaths may become hostile and stop the interview)
■ Avoid conveying emotions (interrogators should avoid conveying their own emotions about the offence or lack of progress in the case)

Question 2

Explain why most researchers believe psychopaths cannot be treated.Describe one well-known study that lends support for this notion.

Answer 2

-Psychopaths see nothing wrong with their behaviour,often don't feel anxiety or distress,and usually only participate in treatment when it is to their benefit.
-Rice,Harris,and Cormier (1992)conducted a study on violent psychopathic and nonpsychopathic forensic psychiatric patients to evaluate the effects of an intensive therapeutic treatment program.
-Patients were followed for 10 years after release.
-Untreated nonpsychopaths had a violent reoffending rate of 39%
-Treated nonpscyhopaths had a violent reoffending rate of 22%
-Untreated psychopaths had a violent reoffending rate of 55%
-Treated psychopaths had a violent reoffending rate of 77%
-These findings contributed to many clinicians concluding that psychopaths should not be treated as their recidivism rates are higher when this is attempted.

Question 3

Discuss several of the reservations that have been raised concerning applying the label of psychopath to children and adults,and what research has found regarding these concerns.

Answer 3

One concern has been the use of the label psychopath ,a label that has many negative connotations for the public and for mental health and criminal justice professionals.As stated by Murrie et al.(2004),"The use of the label 'psychopath' has ominous connotations that may adversely influence treatment decisions,social service plans,and juvenile justice determinations" (p.64 ).In fact,studies by Edens et al.(2003)have demonstrated that mock jurors are more likely to support the death penalty for psychopathic relative to non-psychopathic defendants.
Another concern is whether psychopathic traits in youth are s .Recent studies have indicated a moderate degree of stability in traits between 13-24 years old (Lynam et al.,2007).
Another concern is whether scores on measures of psychopathy arguably may be inflated by general characteristics of adolescence (Edens et al.2001 ,p.59 ).Arguing against this last point are the few studies measuring psychopathic traits in community youth that have found the scores on psychopathy measures to be very low (Forth et al.,2003 ; Sevecke,Pukrop,Kosson,& Krischer,2009).

Question 4

Identify the ten myths associated with psychopathy.

Question 5

Describe the cognitive and affective models of psychopathy in terms of the two predominant theories about the development of psychopathy.

Question 6

Explain how psychopaths differ from nonpsychopaths and more specifically how psychopaths' use of violence differs from nonpychopathic offenders.

Question 7

Name and describe the most widely used assessment tool for measuring psychopathic traits in adults.

Question 8

Explain who Clifford Olson is and why he is famous.What changes have been made to Canadian legislation as a result of his request?

Question 9

Name and describe different study designs used involving twins and siblings when trying to isolate the effect of genes or environment on psychopathic traits.

Question 10

Define psychopathy,Antisocial Personality Disorder,and sociopathy and give three examples of differences between these disorders.