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A Network-Based Examination of the Longitudinal Association Between Psychopathy and Offending Versatility

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Abstract

Objectives

Concerns about the value of features of psychopathy to explanations of offending may be driven by challenges with testing this relationship as opposed to the construct’s limited predictive validity. The current study introduced psychopathology network modeling as an analytic strategy capable of addressing these challenges through a more nuanced description of the structural and statistical association between features of psychopathy and offending. To provide more direct implications for criminological theory and research, this included examining whether within-individual changes in features of psychopathy were associated with within-individual change in offending.

Methods

Data on male and female young offenders from the Pathways to Desistance Study (n = 1354) were used to examine the association between features of psychopathy and offending versatility, as measured by the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory and the Self Report of Offending scale, respectively. Three network structures were modeled that separated the variance in the relationship between features of psychopathy and offending into between-subjects and within-individual networks.

Results

Between-subjects and within-individual analyses indicated that interpersonal and affective features of psychopathy were positively associated with offending versatility. The network approach indicated that remorselessness and manipulativeness were central features of psychopathy that were also associated with offending versatility. Remorselessness in particular helped bridge together conceptually distinct features of psychopathy.

Conclusions

Psychopathology network modeling illustrated the value of features of psychopathy to mainstream criminological theory and research. These features included interpersonal and affective deficits, which previously were identified as poor predictors of offending outcomes.

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Notes

  1. We use the term “features of psychopathy” to describe individual traits that comprise the overarching construct and “psychopathy” to describe the co-occurrence of these features.

  2. This is not to suggest that the only possible conclusion is that psychopathy is a network of co-occurring traits; there are multiple perspectives on the nature or structure of psychopathy and this paper does not provide an answer as to the relative importance of these different perspectives (see Lilienfeld et al. 2019).

  3. Although structurally similar, the goldbricker function for the R package networktools (Jones, 2017) showed no suggestions for removing redundant nodes to reduce the network.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

    Evan McCuish, Martin Bouchard & Eric Beauregard

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  1. Evan McCuish
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  2. Martin Bouchard
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Correspondence to Evan McCuish.

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McCuish, E., Bouchard, M. & Beauregard, E. A Network-Based Examination of the Longitudinal Association Between Psychopathy and Offending Versatility. J Quant Criminol 37, 693–714 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-020-09462-w

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