Psychopathy is submerged in a conceptual mayhem, where multiple perspectives come to light in an attempt to define the complexity of this personality structure and its behavioral correlates, such as criminal behavior. Grounded on Cleckey’s perspective (1941), Hare (1991) proposed that the construct of psychopathy comprises a set of personality and behavioral features. This approach conceives psychopathy as an interaction of the interpersonal-affective personality traits, such as selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness (factor 1) with the impulsive-antisocial behavior factor, which comprises sensation- and risk- seeking trails and social deviance (factor 2). Wilson and Herrnstein (1987) defined psychopathy as a criminogenic trait, and the link between personality and criminality is supported by empirical evidence.
Psychopaths are more likely to engage in instrumental, predatory homicides (89.0% to 93.3%) than nonpsychopathic offenders (42.1% to 48.4%) that are more reactive and...
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Coelho, R.C., Pasion, R. (2019). Psychopathy and Criminal Behavior. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_2307-1
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