Psychopathic Traits

“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by an inability to form human attachment, aggressive narcissism, and antisocial behavior defined by a constellation of affective, interpersonal and behavioral characteristics, most of which society views as pejorative” [1]. Some of these characteristics include irresponsibility, grandiosity, cunning, deceitfulness, selective impulsivity, sexual promiscuity, lack of empathy, etc. People who are psychopathic display not only antisocial behavior but also emotional impairment such as the lack of guilt. They are able to prey on others using their charm, deceit, violence or any other methods that allow them to get what they want. A strong feature of most of the behavior

Psychopathy, in both the mental health and criminal justice systems, has emerged as one of the most important clinical constructs of the 21st century (Hare, Clark, Grann, & Thornton, 2000, p. 623). Where clinically, psychopathy is traditionally described as a combination of inferred socially deviant behaviors and personality traits. Some traits and behaviors a psychopath is seen to possess are commonly known, for example, to being impulsive, selfish, aggressive, lacking remorse, shame, feeling for others, pathologically lying, and having asocial or antisocial behaviors (Hare, & Neumann, 2006, p. 59-60). One of the reasons as to why psychopathy has come to see an increase in the development of its theoretical and applied interest is the

C-The narrator was definitely a psychopath you see he was trying to kill an old man because had a evil looking vulture eye and at the end the narrator cut the old man’s “head and the arms and the legs”.The narrator was very nervous at the end when a neighbor notified the police, the narrator was confident at first but then his mind was playing tricks on him.He was hearing heartbeats of the old man he thought the police was listening to what he was.

Throughout this paper, there will be a number of studies done on criminals, offenders, and children in order to determine ways of identifying psychopaths through causes of psychopathy. In the article “Investigations of Criminal and Conditional Release Profiles of Canadian Federal Offenders as a Function of Psychopathy and Age,” Birt and her associates conducted a study on over 300 Canadian federal offenders, with around 90 being identified as psychopaths. They identified the psychopaths through a test called The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised or PCL-R. After identification, they defined whether the crimes were violent and if so, which type of violence (647). To complete their study, they made sure to follow the offenders’ behavior once they

Review of literature indicates that there have been, and still are sociopathic children who kill, and commit sadistic crimes in this world. Is it possible that such young people can develop sociopathic traits? This paper intends to prove so. Sociopathic children display certain archetypes that can either be taken as a warning, or something to go off of when getting the child help. Children who develop sociopathic traits at a young age can most likely be treated with the help of psychologists, and constant encouragement from parents. However, some children do not take to the treatment and do not feel empathy, or remorse to those around them. If these children are not treated for their behavior, problems are more than likely to

Although it is difficult to imagine a child being psychopathic, it is crucial that we are able to recognize psychopathic behaviors in children. Mental health professionals say they could easily detect early psychopathic tendencies in childhood, but do not want to actually label the child a psychopath yet (Stenson, 2009). According to Duncan, it is difficult to imagine a child doing such things because everyone automatically expects them to fit into the Innocent/ The Child archetype (Schill, 2012).

There is no current compilation of tests or surveys that can serve as a standard to test for psychopathy in children. Even though the cause of this disorder is unknown, researchers have discovered a remarkable amount of information relating to brain abnormalities in psychopaths. Various psychologists claim that just like autism, psychopathy is a distinct neurological condition; this brain activity can be identified in children as young as five years of age (Kahn, 2012). A study tracked the psychological development of 3,000 children, this was done over a span of 25 years, it was stated that psychopathic signs could be detected in children as young as three years of age. New high-level technology such as the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Functional Magnetic Resonance imaging (fMRI) has facilitated researchers in locating the affected sections in the brain of a psychopath.

This article states that we need to stop interchanging psychopath and sociopath, as they are two different disciplines. Pemment goes into detail about the history, research, and growth of psychopathy. He says that we need to understand the difference between the two, as the behavioral characteristics and potential treatments for each are different. The article includes details on Hervey Cleckley and Robert Hares work on psychopathy. The article describes the PCL-R, and how Hare says the test should be done. The PCL-R is used as a screening tool to identify psychopaths, and

Psychopathy, sociopathy, and anti-social personality disorder, also known as ASPD, are three very similar disorders; so much so that it is a common question if they are the same disorder or not. All three of them are defined as people who have anti-social behaviours. All of these disorders are very common in people who disregard both the law and social norms, have no shame or guilt, and are occasionally violent; such as criminals. Psychopathy, sociopathy and ASPD, are essentially the same disorder, as they all fall under the same category of an anti-social disorder, and are based on symptoms, definitions, and crime records.

With these doubts to using the causes of psychopathy to identify future psychopathic offenders, there are ways in which the legal system, including psychologists, therapists, and courts, can better determine the likelihood of a future psychopathic offender and how to care for them. Looking back at the histories of adult psychopaths, they “consistently committed more violent and non-violent crimes” from their “adolescence to their late 40s” (Birt et al. 647). When working backwards and looking within the large number of youths that have psychopathic tendencies, one understands from the evidence that some will continue to commit crimes as they grow up into adulthood. A way to narrow down which children will become repeating offenders is to

Hereditary traits, like dimples and hair color, are passed down from parent to child through genetics. Psychopathic traits are no different than physical traits when passed down from parents to children. Halina Sulestrowska reveals that there are children who have inherited psychopathic traits that did not originate from the environmental influence on the development of the child (37). When examining children, it is difficult to analyze every single factor when identifying whether or not the child is a psychopath. However, when the other main factors of psychopathy are not aligning with the behavior of the child, the last main factor is genetics. These consistent “anomalies” are the missing factor that lead psychologists to look at the

In the past years, there have been hundreds of cases reported of children committing horrible, unthinkable crimes. It is hard to believe that anyone, especially children, could ever commit such horrendous acts. Whether or not a child who commits such a malicious crime is an actual psychopath or not is a common asked question. As soon as the public finds out that a malicious crime has been committed by a young child, they could easily assume that the child who committed the crime is psychopathic and will be for the rest of their lives. But is it possible that someone who commits a horrible crime as a child could grow up and realize what they did was wrong, and feel remorse for what they have done in the past? We have to consider what behaviors the child had shown before and after they had committed the crime, and what motivated the child to commit the crime, before we permanently label them a psychopath. All of the information in this paper was based off a review of literature. The review of literature was retrieved from various experts such as Carl Jung, Jacqueline Stenson, Christian Keysers, Ryan Schill, Paul Mattaiuzzi, and Katherine Ramsland. This review of literature indicates that not all children who commit such crimes can automatically be labeled a psychopath and that they are able to grow up into adults that exhibit normal behavior.

Abusive upbringing, anything from emotional deprivation to wrong disciplinary rules affects psychopaths (377). They also have low sense of moral development. In fact, they do not have a sharp sense of what is right and what is wrong (276). Killing and causing harm to others may not be considered “bad” from psychopaths’ judgment. Other people may be just perceived as mere objects of pleasure, or torture. The textbook and the articles basically state the same concepts of brain abnormalities to explain psychopathic behaviors. The amygdala, along with other regions of the brain can explain some cruel behaviors. Similarly, during the early stage of development of the child, some trauma such as violent upbringing can also accentuate violent behavior in the future.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the definition of serial murder is “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events” (“Serial Murder”). There are many definitions for serial murder, but ultimately it narrows down to the amount of killings and how spaced out the events are. A serial killer is a very organized planner, often waiting for the right moment or the right person before they carry out their next malicious attack. Other common traits include abusive and neglectful childhoods, mental disorders or psychopathic traits, normal to high IQ’s, they are “cunning and manipulative,” have an inability to feel regular emotions like

According to Pinel (1801) psychopathy is defined as persons with complete cognitive capacity but these persons experienced spontaneous and antisocial behavior. These persons suffered from mania without insanity. Pinel (1801) in his description was distinguishing those persons whose unlawful acts and depraved acts were due to mental deficiencies or psychopathology as opposed to those with no indication of any mental defects.