Psychopathy guru blocks critical article

[Jarod]

"Psychopathy guru blocks critical article"

Despite recent evidence that scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) vary widely in adversarial legal contexts depending on which party retained the evaluator, the test has become increasingly popular in forensic work. In Texas, indeed, Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) evaluators are required by statute to measure psychopathy; almost all use this test. It is not surprising that prosecutors find the PCL-R particularly attractive: Evidence of high psychopathy has a powerfully prejudicial impact on jurors deciding whether a capital case defendant or a convicted sex offender is at high risk for bad conduct in the future.

But a current effort by the instrument's author, Robert Hare, to suppress publication of a critical article in a leading scientific journal may paradoxically reduce the credibility of the construct of psychopathy in forensic contexts.
That's the opinion of two psychology-law leaders, psychologist Norman Poythress and attorney John Petrila of the University of South Florida (two authors of a leading forensic psychology text, Psychological Evaluations for the Courts), in a critical analysis of Dr. Hare's threat to sue the journal Psychological Assessment. The contested article, "Is Criminal Behavior a Central Component of Psychopathy? Conceptual Directions for Resolving the Debate," is authored by prominent scholars Jennifer Skeem of UC Irvine and David Cooke of Glasgow University. The study remains unpublished.

LINK

 

[Jarod]

Is Criminal Behavior a Central Component of Psychopathy? Conceptual Directions for Resolving the Debate

Jennifer Skeem of UC Irvine and David Cooke of Glasgow University

The development of the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL–R; R. D. Hare, 2003) has fueled intense
clinical interest in the construct of psychopathy. Unfortunately, a side effect of this interest has been
conceptual confusion and, in particular, the conflating of measures with constructs.

Indeed, the field is in danger of equating the PCL–R with the theoretical construct of psychopathy. A key point in the debate is whether criminal behavior is a central component, or mere downstream correlate, of psychopathy. In this article, the authors present conceptual directions for resolving this debate.

First, factor analysis of PCL–R items in a theoretical vacuum cannot reveal the essence of psychopathy.

Second, a myth about the PCL–R and its relation to violence must be examined to avoid the view that psychopathy is merely a violent variant of antisocial personality disorder.

Third, a formal, iterative process between theory development and empirical validation must be adopted. Fundamentally, constructs and measures must be ecognized as separate entities, and neither reified. Applying such principles to the current state of the field, the authors believe the evidence favors viewing criminal behavior as a correlate, not a component, of psychopathy.

This link has a certificate issue, if anybody finds a better one, can you put it up? thanks.

https://2048.berkeley.edu/files/Skeembackgrpaper1(2).pdf

 

[alex3619]

Many of these tests cannot be objectively verified. They are attempts at approximation. Quite a few psychiatric tests may not be valid, at least to objective standards, we need better research to establish which have validity.

 

[brenda]

Dr. Hare's lawyer sent a letter to the authors and the journal stating that Dr. Hare and his company would "have no choice but to seek financial damages from your publication and from the authors of the article, as well as a public retraction of the article" if it was published. The letter claimed that Skeem and Cooke's paper was "fraught with misrepresentations and other problems and a complete inacurate summary of what amounts to (Hare`s) life`s work` and deliberately fabricated or altered quotes of Dr Hare, and subtantially altered the sense of what Dr Hare said in his previous publications`

I have read Dr Hare`s work and it`s easy to see why he is being set up

 

[peggy-sue]

I too have followed Prof Hare's excellent work for about the last 15 years.
I am also fully on his side about this!
Crimminality is a social construct - as are laws. It/they change with the current zeitgeist, they are not "natural" or consistent across all cultures.

Prof Hare has more recently been trying to tease out what he calls "white collar" psychopathy - the psycopaths who are politicians, who are CEOs, who are bankers, who are ATOS, who are insurance brokers etc.

The ones who do the real damage to the world and humanity as opposed to the few who are serial killers or rapists.

He has found this difficult - these people do not tend to co-operate with his checklist or probings, and don't want to be seen in a bad light!

He has had some progress, by asking others to "answer" the questions for the folk of interest, thus gaining a little insight from folk who are exposed to the psychopath.

So this new paper wants to make it compulsory for an invalid construct to be added, so that the really influential psychopaths don't get tarred with the name and can carry on as they were....

I do not think so!

 

[Jarod]

From the unpublished Skeeme and Cooke article.

On one side of the debate, scholars contended
that “an integral part of psychopathy is the emergence of an early
and persistent pattern of problematic behaviors” (Hare & Neumann,
2005, p. 58). They described antisocial behavior as “important”
(Hare & Neumann, 2005, pp. 59 & 62), “critical” (Hare &
Neumann, 2005, p. 59; Vitacco et al., 2005, p. 473), and even
“central” (Hare & Neumann, 2005, p. 58) to psychopathy. Criminal
behavior is prominently featured in this class of antisocial
behavior (see below).

On the other side, scholars argued that

criminal behavior is an epiphenomenon that is neither diagnostic

of psychopathy nor specific to personality deviation (Cooke &

Michie, 2001; Cooke, Michie, Hart, & Clark, 2004). This debate

about the essence of psychopathy involved the PCL–R. First, for

decades, the field largely ignored the disconnect between the

PCL–R and early conceptualizations of psychopathy. These conceptualizations

(Cleckley, 1941; Karpman, 1948; McCord &

McCord, 1964) focus on interpersonal and affective traits of psychopathy

that we refer to in this article as

emotional detachment,

following Patrick, Bradley, and Lang (1993). However, the

PCL–R weighs antisocial behavior as strongly as—if not more

strongly than—traits of emotional detachment in assessing psychopathy.

Without a history of violent or criminal behavior, even

an individual with pronounced interpersonal and affective traits of

psychopathy is unlikely to surpass the PCL–R’s threshold score for

diagnosing psychopathy. Second, the field’s recent efforts to resolve

the disconnect between conceptualization and measurement

have centered tightly on the structure of the PCL measures. These

measures are being intensively analyzed to determine whether

criminal behavior belongs to the psychopathy construct itself

 

[peggy-sue]

Crimminality is still just an arbitrary construct.
What is "criminal" in one culture may be lauded be in another.

It is not a contender for a listing on a psychopathy checklist - any more than using loopholes to avoid corporate tax is!