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Issues in Juvenile Psychopathy

Source University of Virginia

Core features of psychopathy, such as lying, disregard of others, and manipulativeness, are usually first present in childhood (Hare, 1970). These personality features and behaviors may become increasingly prevalent in adolescence, and may culminate in psychopathy as a stable personality disorder in adulthood. These observations raise the possibility of early prevention and intervention efforts to avoid the devastating societal and personal consequences of psychopathic behavior. Therefore, there is good reason to study the emergence of psychopathy in adolescence or even the precursors of psychopathy in childhood.

The gold standard for measuring psychopathy in youth is the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003),  a downward extension of the original adult version of the Psychopathy Checklist. This instrument should be part of a comprehensive assessment that includes extensive clinical interviewing and review of information from collateral sources. The potential for deception and dishonesty is high in this population and there should be solid efforts to question, check, and confirm key facts and claims.

A related problem is that researchers and clinicians frequently look for quicker and more efficient ways to gather data and conduct evaluations. Self-report instruments are expedient and convenient, but may not produce the quality and depth of information necessary to distinguish emergent psychopathy from transient adolescent misbehavior. See our study by Murrie, Cornell, Kaplan, McConville, & Levy Elkon (2004) below. We caution researchers and clinicians against reliance on paper and pencil measures of psychopathy. There may be limited use for such measures as screening devices to identify candidates for a more comprehensive evaluation, but they are likely not sufficient when used in isolation.

A number of researchers have also raised concern that there could be serious detrimental consequences to labeling a juvenile as a "psychopath." A series of studies have examined how jurors, judges, and clinicians might be influenced by the psychopathy label. These studies were carried out primarily by researchers at Sam Houston University, with collaboration from Dr. Cornell. As summarized below, these studies demonstrated that the term “psychopathy” does not automatically carry more negative connotations than other commonly used labels such as conduct disorder. More influential than the terms themselves are the characteristics used in supporting a diagnosis or describing the background and history of a juvenile offender. Nevertheless, clinicians should be careful about their use of the term “psychopath” and to qualify what is meant by the diagnosis and take care not to address any misconceptions that might be generated by the term. In all diagnoses, it is preferable to diagnose a condition rather than label a person. For example, a person suffers from schizophrenia rather than a person is “a schizophrenic.”

Despite the fact that there are gaps in our current knowledge of juvenile psychopathy, there is a great deal of research supporting the reliability and validity of the PCL:YV, summarized in the manual authored by Forth, Kosson, and Hare (2003).

Research that explores psychopathic-like traits in youth has the potential to provide information of value for early intervention and public safety. While clinicians are cautioned to be mindful of its limitations and to recognize the potential for misuse, it is important that researchers continue to try to understand this disorder due to the tremendous social, psychological and economic costs of psychopathy.

The Youth Violence Project has conducted several studies of adult and juvenile psychopathy. Although no current projects are under way, here are summaries of some of our previous work.

Murrie, D., & Cornell, D. (2000). Adolescent psychopathy and the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 75, 110-125.

We investigated the ability of the Millon Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI) to assess psychopathy as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Participants were 90 adolescents in an inpatient psychiatric unit. The MACI's Substance Abuse Proneness (r = .47), Unruly (r = 43), and Submissive (r = -.42) scales correlated most strongly with the PCL-R. Using a discriminant function analysis, the Substance Abuse Proneness scale correctly distinguished between high and low psychopathy content scale using 20 MACI items. This content scale correlated with the PCL-R (r = .60) and distinguished high and low psychopathy groups in 83% (Kappa = .66) of cases (sensitivity 85%, specificity 81%).

Kappa  E quivalent Kapp a an alternative measure for specificity


What is clearly required is  actual data and thanks to the collaborators we have that now.