Abstract
The main goal of the current study was to evaluate intelligence as a compensatory factor in the expression of non-criminal psychopathy. This hypothesis was empirically tested in a moderation framework. Undergraduate students (n = 372) completed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised, Shipley-2, and Antisocial Behavior Questionnaire. Results from zero-inflated Poisson regression models indicated that intelligence (particularly verbal intelligence) moderated the relationship between psychopathy and criminality, such that those higher on both psychopathy and intelligence had engaged in less criminal behavior. These findings provide preliminary evidence for the hypothesis that intelligence serves as a compensatory factor for non-criminal psychopathy.
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Notes
If the driving while intoxicated item were removed from the ABQ total scores, 42.2 % of the sample would still endorse engaging in some other criminal behavior at least once.
Given the low prevalence rate of individual ABQ items in the current study, such specific analyses could not be conducted here.
For standard ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis, quantitative reviews have indicated that the average effect size of an interaction effect using continuous variables is approximately .001 to .003 in R2 change (e.g., Aiken and West 1991; Fairchild and MacKinnon 2009; McClelland and Judd 1993), which requires a large sample size for adequate statistical power. Further compounding this issue is that we are using a non-linear regression model, which requires even more power than standard linear OLS regression.
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Portions of this article were used for the fulfillment of Tina Wall’s honors thesis under the supervision of Dr. Sellbom at The University of Alabama.
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Wall, T.D., Sellbom, M. & Goodwin, B.E. Examination of Intelligence as a Compensatory Factor in Non-Criminal Psychopathy in a Non-Incarcerated Sample. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 35, 450–459 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-013-9358-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-013-9358-1