Summary by Theresia Bedard and the Research Committee
Research Highlights
- Male participants with psychopathic traits rated the personality profile of someone described as easy to take advantage of in ways that resemble the actual personality profiles of people who have been victimized.
- Their ratings of a fictional character who was easy to take advantage of resembled the actual personality profiles reported by individuals who had been victimized on several dimensions of personality, including Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience.
- These findings suggest men with psychopathic traits may be able to use information about the personality profiles of people to help them determine whom to target for exploitation and manipulation.
Background:
Psychopathy has primarily been conceptualized as a personality disorder (Hare, 2003) – however, some researchers have begun to argue that psychopathy provided adaptive benefits in our evolutionary past (Krupp et al., 2013). From this perspective, in order to target potential victims to exploit or manipulate, individuals with psychopathy need to understand cues and signs that show vulnerability.
Reasons for the study:
Past research has found that individuals high in psychopathic traits are better able to identify individuals with past victimization histories due to the way that they walked (Ritchie et al., 2018). However, prior to the current study, there was no research addressing if there are any non-physical traits (such as personality traits) that people with psychopathy might also use to target potential victims. The researchers were interested in figuring out whether psychopathic people assume that certain personality characteristics (such as outgoingness) indicate that an individual is easy to take advantage of. The researchers also wanted to determine if there were similarities between the personality profile that people with psychopathy identify as showing someone is an ideal potential victim and the actual personality characteristics of people who have been victimized.
How the study was done:
Phase 1:
The first phase included 173 female undergraduate students. Only women were included for this phase because, although overall rates for violent victimization are comparable for men and women (e.g., Statistics Canada, 2010), women between the ages of 18 and 44 have the highest rate of violent victimization. The women were asked to answer questions about their personality and experiences relating to significant life events. These women filled out the following questionnaires for the study:
- A life events checklist : This questionnaire asks people if they have experienced a large number of different life events, including both positive events (e.g., “got married,” “graduated”) and negative events (e.g., “infidelity,” “unemployment”). The measure included eight life events that were categorized as violent victimization events (e.g., robbery, assault) and two events that were categorized as sexual violence victimization events (sexual assault and sexual abuse). Participants who endorsed one or more kinds of victimization were classified as “victims.”
- A general measure of personality: According to the HEXACO model of personality, our personalities are made up of six different dimensions:
- Honesty-Humility (e.g., being honest, loyal vs. lying, unfaithful),
- Emotionality (e.g., scared, anxious vs. brave, independent),
- Extraversion (e.g., outgoing, talkative vs. shy, quiet),
- Agreeableness (e.g., gentle, friendly vs. mean, argumentative),
- Conscientiousness (e.g., responsible, hard-working vs. irresponsible, lazy), and
- Openness to Experience (e.g., creative, intellectual vs. unimaginative, practical).
Phase 2:
The second phase included 510 men who were asked to judge the personality traits of individuals they perceived as being easy to take advantage of or vulnerable to being manipulated. These men filled out the following questionnaires for the study:
- A self-report measure of psychopathy (the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale). Higher scores reveal the person has more traits of psychopathy, while lower scores reveal the person has fewer traits of psychopathy.
— Ratings of personality (using the six HEXACO dimensions of personality)
Next, the researchers presented participants with descriptions of two fictional characters: 1) a person who was said to be easy to manipulate or take advantage of; and 2) a person who was said to be hard to take advantage of or not easy to manipulate. Participants rated the personalities of the two fictional characters on the six dimensions of personality. The researchers then figured out the personality features that the men connected with being easy or hard to manipulate.
What they found:
There were several noteworthy findings:
- In comparison to women without victimization histories, women who had experienced violent or sexual victimization rated themselves as lower in Agreeableness and higher in Openness to Experience.
- Men in the study rated individuals who were presented as vulnerable to exploitation (or easy to take advantage of) as being more Emotional and Agreeable, on average, and as being less Extraverted, less Conscientious, and less Open to Experience than individuals who were difficult to exploit.
- The main objective of this study was to determine if men high in psychopathic traits had more accurate assumptions about the personality traits of people who are easy to take advantage of, and if their ratings of such individuals were more similar to the actual personalities of victims (Phase 1 participants with prior victimization histories) than the ratings of such people by men low in psychopathic traits. This is what they found: the perceptions of men with psychopathic traits regarding a person who was easy to manipulate were similar to the average personality scores of actual victims in regards to levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. This means that, for these four personality dimensions, individuals with psychopathic traits were able to identify the personality traits associated with being vulnerable to manipulation.
- However, the ratings of men with psychopathic traits about Emotionality in someone who is an easy target did not match the ratings of Emotionality of actual victims. That is, men with psychopathic traits were less accurate at judging Emotionality as a sign of vulnerability.
The Takeaway:
Men with psychopathic traits were able to identify several personality traits as distinguishing people who are easy versus hard to victimize; and these traits were similar to the average personality profiles of women with actual victimization histories. These findings suggest people with psychopathic traits are accurate at knowing the kinds of personality traits that are associated with a history of victimization. This study is a good first step in figuring out why individuals with psychopathic traits appear to be good at identifying and selecting potential victims. If people with psychopathy are able to identify people who have personality traits associated with victimization then they may be better able to target vulnerable people for exploitation and manipulation, whether these individuals have been victimized before or not.
References Cited:
Hare, R. D. (2003). The Hare psychopathy Checklist-Revised. Toronto, Ontario, Canada:
Multi-Health Systems.
Krupp, D. B., Sewall, L. A., Lalumière, M. L., Sheriff, C., & Harris, G. T. (2013). Psychopathy, adaptation, and disorder. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 139. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00139
Statistics Canada (2010). Gender differences in police-reported violent crime in Canada, 2008. Retrieved from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85f0033m/2010024/userinfo-usagerinfo-eng.htm
