| Psychopathy is a personality profile characterized by a host of disturbances, with impulsivity being commonly identified as one of the fundamental features. The association between psychopathy and impulsivity, however, appears inconsistent given that research has found psychopaths to engage in more predatory types of behavior. Such ability to strategize and execute an act seems contradictory to the notion of the impulsive psychopath. The nature of this complicated dynamic lies in the elusive history surrounding the construct of impulsivity. A plethora of definitions have been proposed in the literature accompanied by a multitude of measurement approaches that do not necessarily correlate. It therefore engenders concern on how one can adequately assess the impulse control in psychopathy when the conceptualization of impulsivity itself is difficult to capture. Research provides convincing evidence that impulsivity can be understood on a multidimensional level. To understand the enigmatic phenomenon of the simultaneously impetuous but constrained psychopath, impulse control was assessed by delving into its components. It was hypothesized that psychopathy would yield a different directional relationship depending on the element of impulse control in question. Specifically, a negative correlation was expected with emotional control and motor control, while a positive relationship was projected between psychopathy and cognitive control. A total of 75 participants from a county jail were administered the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV; Hart, Cox, & Hare, 1995) and separate measures that tapped into cognitive planning ability, emotional control, and the control of motor activity. Results lend partial collaboration to the hypotheses and indicate that impulsivity is part and parcel of psychopathy but only on an emotional level. The relationships between psychopathy and cognitive control or motor control proved to be negligible. These findings provide support against viewing psychopathy as being marked by an all encompassing lack of impulse control and further emphasize the need for the multidimensional dissection of impulse control in any discussion or empirical investigation of psychopathy. |
