Racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality

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Abstract

This paper proposes that there are racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality conceptualised as a continuously distributed trait, such that high values of the trait are present in blacks and Native Americans, intermediate values in Hispanics, lower values in whites and the lowest values in East Asians. Part one of the paper sets out the evidence for this thesis. Part two applies the thesis to the unresolved problem in The Bell Curve that racial and ethnic differences in a number of social phenomena such as crime, welfare dependency, rates of marriage, etc. cannot be fully explained by differences in intelligence and proposes that some of the residual disparities are attributable to differences in psychopathic personality. Part three of the paper integrates the theory with Rushton’s r-K theory of race differences.

Introduction

This paper offers a contribution to a problem posed by Herrnstein and Murray (1994) in The Bell Curve. Herrnstein and Murray argue that racial and ethnic differences in a number of social phenomena such as crime, poverty, long-term unemployment, teenage pregnancy and the like are partly explicable in terms of differences in intelligence. They show, however, that differences in intelligence cannot explain entirely the racial and ethnic differences in these phenomena and they therefore conclude that some other factor or factors must also be involved. They conclude that “Some ethnic differences are not washed away by controlling for either intelligence or for any other variables that we examined. We leave those remaining differences unexplained and look forward to learning from our colleagues where the explanations lie” (p. 340).

In this paper it is proposed that a component in the solution to this problem lies in racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality considered as a continuously distributed personality trait. It is argued that of the major racial and ethnic groups, East Asians score lowest on psychopathic personality, whites score next lowest followed by Hispanics, while blacks and Native Americans score highest. Of these five populations, East Asians, whites, blacks and Native Americans can be considered as racial groups while Hispanics are an ethnic group from Latin America and the Caribbean with a common Spanish heritage. The first part of the paper sets out the evidence for this thesis. The second part applies the thesis to the solution of the problem raised by Herrnstein and Murray. The third part of the paper discusses the relation between the present thesis and Rushton’s r-K theory of race differences.

Section snippets

Psychopathic personality

We begin by describing the nature of psychopathic personality. The condition was identified in the early nineteenth century by the British physician John Pritchard (1837) who proposed the term “moral imbecility” for those deficient in moral sense but whose intellectual ability was unimpaired. The term psychopathic personality was first used in 1915 by the German psychiatrist Emile Kraepelin (1915) and has been employed as a diagnostic label throughout the twentieth century. In 1941 the

The Bell Curve

We noted in the introduction that Herrnstein and Murray raised the problem that while differences in intelligence can explain some portion of racial and ethnic differences in a number of important social phenomena including crime, unemployment, poverty, illegitimacy, welfare dependence, rates of marriage and low birth weight babies, differences in intelligence cannot explain the totality of these differences. They showed that when blacks, Hispanics and whites are matched for intelligence and

Relation of the present theory to Rushton’s r-K theory of race differences

We turn now to the relation between the present theory and Rushton’s (2000) r-K theory of racial differences. Rushton’s theory proposes that there is a Mongoloid–Caucasoid–Negroid gradient of r-K reproductive strategies such that Mongoloids are more K and devote resources to producing small numbers of children, investing heavily in them and providing them with a high level of parental care; Negroids are more r and devote resources to producing greater numbers of children, investing less heavily

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