Journal
JOURNAL OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 117, Issue 2, Pages 406-413Publisher
AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC
DOI: 10.1037/0021-843X.117.2.406
Keywords
psychopathy; prisoner's dilemma game; cooperation; Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised; Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Maladaptive social behavior is one of the defining characteristics of psychopathic personality disorder. Nevertheless, maladaptive social behavior has only rarely been observed among psychopaths in experimentally controlled situations. The authors assessed the behavior of criminal psychopaths from high-security psychiatric hospitals in a computer simulation of a social dilemma situation. The psychopaths showed a markedly higher proneness to competitive (i.e., noncooperative) behavior than did healthy adults from the general population. The odds ratio between defection and being a psychopath was estimated at 7.86 in the sample. The probability to choose selfish instead of cooperative behavior was significantly linked to the following subscales of the Psychopathy Personality Inventory-Revised (S. O. Lilienfeld & M. R. Widows, 2005): rebellious nonconformity, Machiavellian egocentricity, and the total score. On average, the psychopathic participants accumulated higher gain and more strongly exploited their counterpart than did the healthy participants.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available