Psychopathy Trait And Decision-Making Deficits In Offenders

Psychopathy is a developmental personality disorder marked by affective deficits and antisocial behavior.Previous studies have shown that the psychopathy severity is positively associated with violent crime and physically aggressive behavior.Moreover,psychopathy has been found to provide high predictive validity when it comes to recidivism risk assessment,violence,and treatment suitability.Therefore,it is important to understand the psychological trait and cognitive characteristics of psychopathy in offenders.In recent years,researchers have carried out a series of studies on the psychopathy self-reported scale and there have been several related studies on the Chinese version of the psychopathy self-reported scale(Levenson SelfReport Psychopathy Scale),but the sample of these studies are mainly college students.In addition,the psychometric Properties of Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale is still controversial.Considering the relationship between psychopathy and antisocial behavior,it is necessary to investigate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale among offenders.Since another feature of psychopathy is affective deficits,many researchers have begun to pay attention to the performance of psychopathy individuals in affective decision-making,as well as to examine the relationship between self-report psychopathy scores and performance in decision-making.Previous studies of psychopathy and decision-making were mainly based on the Iowa Gambling Task.Some of the studies found that psychopathy individuals performed worse on the Iowa Gambling Task than the control group,and some studies found inconsistent results.On the other hand,studies have found that psychopathy scores are correlated with risktaking in the Iowa Gambling Task,particularly Antisocial factor of psychopathy.However,this result has not been repeated by a certain number of studies.The reasons for the inconsistency between psychopathy and decision-making research may be as follows:(1)different tools for measuring psychopathy;(2)different sample groups selected for these studies;(3)The instruction of the Iowa Gambling Task.Based on this,the current study intends to use the offenders as the test group,combined with the design of two study to examine the relationship between offenders' psychopathy and decision-making performance.In study 1,male offenders were used as a sample to examine the psychology properties of the Chinese version Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale among male offenders.Study 2 examines the decision-making characteristics under uncertainly of male offenders and the relationship between psychopathy trait and decision-making under uncertainty in offenders based on study 1.The results showed that:(1)The Chinese version of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale has good reliability and validity among male offenders,and the factor analysis results also support the three-factor Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy structure.The Chinese version of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy scale has the same meaning as the English version.(2)In the Iowa Gambling Task,the offenders chose more disadvantage cards than the control group.However,there was no significant correlation between the selfreported psychopathy scores and the Iowa Gambling Task performance.In the Game of Dice Task,the offenders showed a greater risk-taking than the college student.Lastly,in the sample of offenders and the entire sample,antisocial factor of psychopathy was found to be significantly correlated with risk-taking in the decision-making under risk.(3)Offenders showed decision-making impairments in both IGT and GDT.The correlation and regression results show that antisocial factor in psychopathy was more related to executive dysfunction.It also means that decision-making is different under risk and ambiguity.