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Relation of Antisocial and Psychopathic Traits to Suicide-related Behavior Among Offenders

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Law and Human Behavior

Abstract

Offenders with antisocial traits are relatively likely to attempt suicide, largely because they are more likely to have high negative emotionality and low constraint. Among 682 male offenders, we tested whether negative emotionality, low constraint, and also substance use problems mediated any relationship between antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy on the one hand, and suicide-related behavior (SRB) and ideation on the other. ASPD and the impulsivity/lifestyle features of psychopathy weakly predicted SRB. High negative emotionality and low constraint (but not substance use) mediated the relation between ASPD and SRB. Impulsivity/lifestyle features of psychopathy retained an independent predictive effect. Self-report psychopathy measures added unique predictive variance to the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised. We discuss implications for suicide risk assessment and prevention.

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Notes

  1. For clarity, we use “Factor I” and “Factor II” to refer to the generic distinction between affective/interpersonal and behavioral features of psychopathy, regardless of measure. We also use these terms to refer to the ‘old’ PCL-R two-factor structure. Hence, “factors” one through four (that is, no Roman numerals) refer to newer three- and four-factor models of the PCL-R. These are sometimes referred to as “facets,” as they are in Hare (2003), despite being nested factors.

  2. MIC can be expected to be low for the PPI Total score because items for its two scales, PPI-I and PPI-II were intended to tap orthogonal constructs, and hence would not be expected to relate to variance within the total score attributable to the converse factor.

  3. Raters agreed on 44 of 50 cases.

  4. Component loadings are available from the first author upon request.

  5. Originally we had also included both the depression and borderline features scales from the PAI as potential mediators. However, we encountered substantial multicollinearity between these variables and NE (rs ≈ .90), which led to very high variance inflation factors and very low tolerances. Therefore, we could not obtain separable indicators for NE, depression, and borderline features for use in the same analysis. Given that NE is the overarching construct, and theoretically subsumes depression and borderline features, we chose to use NE and omit depression and borderline features from these analyses.

  6. The odds ratio derived from the logistic regression analyses (e b) refers to the change in probability of observing the outcome event for each one-unit increase on the predictor, and hence must be gauged against this factor. For instance, NE, being derived from the first unrotated principal component of multiple PAI scales, has 593 steps or possible values. As such, an e b of 1.005 (the e b for NE in Table 4) must be exponentiated to arrive at the overall odds ratio (here, overall odds = 1.005593 = 19.25).

  7. For purposes of replicating Verona et al. (2001), we also conducted analyses of the PCL-R two-factor model. PCL-R Factor II was predictive of both attempts and ideation in the first block of linear and logistic regression analyses, but its relationship with suicide ideation and SRB was completely mediated by NE and low constraint (the latter for ideation only).

  8. SCID adult symptoms were used in analyses because SCID total symptoms were not significantly related to suicide attempts in bivariate analyses.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, research grant RO1 MH63783-O1A1, “Personality Features in Social Deviancy.” Kevin S. Douglas also is affilitated with Mid-Sweden University as a Guest Professor of Applied Criminology. Kevin S. Douglas gratefully acknowledges the support of the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research’s Career Scholar Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 1S6

    Kevin S. Douglas

  2. Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Scott O. Lilienfeld

  3. University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Jennifer L. Skeem

  4. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Norman G. Poythress

  5. Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    John F. Edens

  6. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Christopher J. Patrick

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  1. Kevin S. Douglas
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  2. Scott O. Lilienfeld
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  5. John F. Edens
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Correspondence to Kevin S. Douglas.

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Douglas, K.S., Lilienfeld, S.O., Skeem, J.L. et al. Relation of Antisocial and Psychopathic Traits to Suicide-related Behavior Among Offenders. Law Hum Behav 32, 511–525 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10979-007-9122-8

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