The Relationship Between Psychopathy and Intelligence

This video answers the question: What is the association between psychopathy and intelligence? When we think of the word “psychopathy,” there is this idea that psychopathic traits are related to intelligence, meaning the more we see of psychopathy the higher level of intelligence we see. This goes back in the media in terms of movies, television, and even early research into psychopathy and intelligence. One of the difficulties here is that we don't really have a single agreed-upon definition of psychopathy and we don't have a single agreed-upon definition of intelligence. Psychopathy can be understood in a number of different ways and there are several different instruments that measure psychopathy. A lot of our understanding really comes from how those instruments break down the construct of psychopathy. One of those popular instruments is the Psychopathy Checklist Revised and another popular instrument is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised. If we look at the PCL, we see that there are different number of factors depending on which version of the instrument. One popular conceptualization is a two-factor model and each of those factors may have one or two lower order factors. If we look at Factor 1 we see interpersonal and affective traits like superficial charm, callousness, and being egocentric. Factor 2 is where we see antisocial behavior and sometimes lifestyle. Here we'd see irresponsibility, impulsivity, and violating society's norms, so largely thought of as criminality. A lot of times of course we think of psychopathy, we also think of antisocial personality disorder. That's an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). It's a cluster B personality disorder. The Factor 2 that we see what psychopathy would be more closely related to antisocial personality disorder than the Factor 1. Sometimes Factor 1 is even conceptualized as being helpful in some ways. A lot of times we think of psychopathy overall as destructive and related to criminality, but it really depends on which traits someone has. Another instrument was the Psychopathic Personality Inventory Revised and here we also see two factors, although there is a third factor which isn't used as much. The first two factors would be fearless dominance and self-centered impulsivity. Roughly speaking, fearless dominance lines up with Factor 1 except you also see characteristics like stress immunity, social boldness, and physical fearlessness. Self-centered impulsiveness is similar to Factor 2. The third factor I mentioned that we don't really use too often the cold-heartedness factor and usually that's thought of as separate. Here we see lack of empathy lack of remorse, lovelessness, and guiltlessness.
Research has found that there is no relationship between psychopathy and intelligence. In terms of whether intelligence is a protective factor against criminality, intelligence may actually be a protective factor with fearless dominance but with self-centered impulsivity higher intelligence actually puts the individual at more risk for antisocial behavior.

Watts, A. L., Salekin, R. T., Harrison, N., Clark, A., Waldman, I. D., Vitacco, M. J., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2016). Psychopathy: Relations with three conceptions of intelligence. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, And Treatment, 7(3), 269-279. doi:10.1037/per0000183

Видео The Relationship Between Psychopathy and Intelligence канала Dr. Todd Grande