Patrick Bateman. Hannibal Lecter. Ted Bundy. The guy who used to live downstairs from me. Psychopaths, every one. Except defining psychopathy, let alone measuring it, turns out to be surprisingly controversial among psychologists and forensic scientists.
In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at the latest attempts to define and model psychopathy, the evidence on the questionnaires used to measure it, and whether The Sopranos was right in saying that therapy only makes psychopaths worse.
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Show notes
The Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy strongly criticise Jon Ronson’s book The Psychopath Test
2021 Nature Reviews Disease Primers article on psychopathy
Critical discussion of whether the psychopath label should be applied to children
Christopher Patrick’s review of psychopathy research and discussion of his “triarchic” model of psychopathy
2020 review-of-reviews on whether psychopathy checklist scores predict violence, therapy outcomes, or remorse
The 2020 letter from “concerned experts” about PCL-R scores and institutional violence
Review on psychopathy scores and “dangerousness” from 2022
The controversial 1992 study on iatrogenic effects on psychopaths in therapy
“Are psychopathy assessments ethical?”
Credits
The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.
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