Abstract
Objective
The examination of ultimate factors that maintain genetic (and consequently phenotypic) variance in a behavioral trait represents one of the key goals of evolutionary ecology of personality. One of these factors are adaptive trade-offs: if a trait is involved in a trade-off, than natural selection cannot deplete its genetic variance. We used this theoretical framework to examine psychopathy, a behavioral syndrome consisting of deceitful behavior, emotional coldness and recklessness. Relying on previous research, we assumed that psychopathy elevates fertility but diminishes offspring quality, thus contributing to quantity-quality trade-off.
Method
The research sample was consisted of 635 individuals with at least one child, who were at the end of their reproductive phase. We examined psychopathy traits of these individuals, together with parental investment via their offspring ratings. Furthermore, we collected the measures of offspring Covitality (combined physical and mental health) and Residual reproductive value (expected future fitness in offspring) as the measures of offspring quality. We used parental reproductive success as an indicator of offspring quantity.
Results
Research results confirmed the hypotheses. Psychopathic traits had small positive relations with the number of children and negative associations with parental investment, Covitality and residual reproductive value in offspring. Mediation model that depicted parental investment as the mediator of the psychopathy-offspring quality link had a good fit to the data.
Conclusions
Research findings have high heuristic potential because they provide an insight in how natural selection can preserve variation in psychopathy.
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Notes
We have chosen to use a new scale for measuring psychopathy since the only rating scales for psychopathy exploration are the PCL-R and its derivatives (Hare 2003; Hart et al. 1995; Forth et al. 2003). However, these measures have several limitations which prevent their usage in large surveys: they usually depend on external information about the rated person, so they are applicable only in institutional settings; the assessment is time-consuming – over 1 h per participant; the rater must be a skilled professional; they are based on interviews so the rater must work with only one participant per administration. The SPRS is constructed to have the exactly opposite characteristics, which makes it much more suitable for the application in a research with large sample sizes.
The original ALHB scale of Mother/father relationship quality (Figueredo 2007) has a slightly different response style: the responses are ranged from 0 to 3 with the exactly same labels for the responses (from “not at all” to “a lot”).
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Acknowledgments
The work on this manuscript was financed by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development via the project 47011, realized by the Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research. It is with our deepest sorrow that we inform you of the passing of our co-author, Boban Petrović during the writing of this article.
Funding
The work on this manuscript was financed by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development via the project 47011, realized by the Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research.
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Appendix
Appendix
Short Psychopathy Rating Scale
Instruction for participants: Please rate your biological mother/father on the following items. The numbers on the response scale mean the following: 1 stands for “She/he does not express a trait/behavior at all”, while 5 denotes “Person does express a trait/behavior to a high extent.”
Deceitfulness items:
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She/he cares only about hers/his personal interest.
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She/he has very high opinion about her/himself.
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She/he manipulates others.
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She/he uses charm in order to get what she/he wants.
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She/he uses lying in order to get what she/he wants.
Emotional coldness items:
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She/he rarely expresses the feeling of guilt.
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She/he rarely feels compassion to others when they feel bad.
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She/he is emotionally cold person.
Recklessness items:
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She/he lives a day by day, without extended plans.
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She/he is irresponsible person.
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She/he is often late for meetings or with execution of a task.
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She/he lacks self-control.
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She/he enters in unnecessary risks.
Parental investment scale
Instruction for participants: Please rate the following characteristics of your biological parents during the years you were growing up. The numbers on the response scale mean the following: 1 stands for “Not et all”, while 5 denotes “A lot.”
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How much she/he understand your problems and worries?
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How much could you confide in her/him about things that were bothering you?
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How much love and affection did she/he give you?
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How much time and attention did she/he give you when you needed it?
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How much effort did they put into watching over you and making sure you had a good upbringing?
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Međedović, J., Petrović, B. Quantity-Quality Trade-Offs May Partially Explain Inter-Individual Variation in Psychopathy. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 5, 211–226 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-019-00113-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-019-00113-4