Dr. Schug discusses Psychopathy in the News, including a case of corruption in California and a case of murder, sexual assault, and property crime in several cities in Canada. He also talks with Dr. Dave Kosson, Professor of Psychology at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science and co-author of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version, about fundamental concepts related to how researchers study psychopathic individuals. Click here to stream the podcast.
Surprisingly little is known about the actual prevalence of psychopathy. It is easy to find offenders with many psychopathic traits in jails and prisons, but in the community, there hasn’t been much research done. Estimates of between one and four percent of men (and less for women) have been reported, though it is unclear what these figures are based on.
One important point to consider is that psychopathy is dimensional—that is, traits exist along a continuum, where everyone can be rated in terms of how much psychopathy they have. In other words, it is an illusion to think of psychopathy as dichotomous (i.e., one has it or does not).
Research on psychopathy has exploded since 1980 when Robert Hare published the original version of the Psychopathy Checklist. One problem to consider, however, is that not all of the research done on psychopaths in jails and prisons may apply to psychopathic individuals in the community—who may be different in some way compared to those who have been caught.
There is a tremendous need for epidemiological studies of psychopathy in the United States and Canada. Subtypes of psychopathy which have been studied are primary versus secondary psychopathy, and, to a lesser extent, successful versus unsuccessful psychopathy. Research has yielded substantial evidence that psychopathic offenders exhibit emotional dysfunction and cognitive dysfunction, as well as interpersonal anomalies.
To learn more about some of what we have learned from research studies of psychopathic individuals, consider visiting our Research Pages, where the results of scientific studies are clearly explained.