Gender Differences in the Assessment and Manifestation of Psychopathy: Results From a Multicenter Study in Forensic Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

Gender differences were explored in PCL-R codings and the manifestation of psychopathy in 197 female and 197 male patients admitted between 1984 and 2013 to one of four Dutch forensic psychiatric hospitals. Four groups were compared with respect to criminological characteristics, historical violence risk factors and psychiatric characteristics including incidents during treatment. The lowered PCL-R cut-off score of 23 as applied in the Female Additional Manual (FAM; de Vogel, de Vries Robb e, van Kalmthout, & Place, 2012) was used to define women with psychopathy. The four groups were: (1) women without psychopathy (PCL-R < 23), (2) women with psychopathy (PCL-R 23), (3) men without psychopathy (PCL-R < 30), and (4) men with psychopathy (PCL-R 30). Overall, it was found that women and men with psychopathy show multiple similarities in their personal and criminal histories, but there were also several gender differences. Women with psychopathy compared to men with psychopathy committed more fraud, offended more often out of relational frustration, were more often diagnosed with the Borderline Personality Disorder, and showed less physical violence, but more manipulative and self-destructive behavior during treatment. Overall, women obtained lower scores on the PCL-R than men. Predictive validity of the PCL-R for physical violence during treatment was good for men and moderate for women. When verbal violence was included in the definition of violence, the predictive validity of the PCL-R was good for both the female and male sample. Implications of this study for forensic practice are discussed and several directions for future research are provided.

Can Psychopathic Traits be Adaptive?

“…In line with previous findings, psychopathy was more pronounced in men than in women (e.g. de Vogel & Lancel, 2016;Issa, Falkenbach, Trupp, Campregher, & Lap, 2017;Miller et al, 2011). This finding corroborates the validity of the data obtained in the present study, together with the importance of studying sex differences in psychopathy.…”

“…These results are in line with findings that Antisocial and Lifestyle traits are more strongly associated with internalizing symptoms (e.g. Lynam & Miller, 2015;Sica et al, 2015), self-destructive behavior and borderline personality disorder (de Vogel & Lancel, 2016) among women than men. Moreover, our results are consistent with findings that women with more pronounced secondary psychopathic traits demonstrate more pathology and internalizing problems than men with these traits (Falkenbach, Reinhard, & Larson, 2017).…”

“…In contrast, psychopathy was more associated with somatization (Lilienfeld & Hess, 2001), internalizing symptoms such as depression and stress (Lynam & Miller, 2015;Sica et al, 2015) and with suicide behaviors (Sevecke, Lehmkuhl, & Krischer, 2009;Verona, Hicks, & Patrick, 2005) in women than in men. Furthermore, positive associations between Factor 2 psychopathy traits and borderline personality disorders are characteristic for women and not men (Sprague, Javdani, Sadeh, Newman, & Verona, 2012;de Vogel & Lancel, 2016).…”

The relationships between triarchic psychopathic traits and value orientations in men and women

“…In line with that, it was found that psychopathy in men compared to women was more associated with antisocial behaviour (Strand & Belfrage, 2005), violence and criminal recidivism (Verona & Vitale, 2006), as well as with impulsivityrelated tendencies (e.g., difficulties resisting urges, sensation seeking) (Miller, Watts, & Jones, 2011). In contrast, psychopathy in women was associated with more fraud in criminal history, manipulative and self-destructive behaviour during therapy (de Vogel & Lancel, 2016), and internalizing symptoms such as depression (Sevecke, Lehmkuhl, & Krischer, 2009). There are also gender differences in values with females reporting lower hedonistic values (Abraham & Rahardjo, 2015).…”

“…The existing ones usually show profound gender differences in the mean level of AND VALUE ORIENTATIONS IN MEN AND WOMEN psychopathy (e.g. de Vogel & Lancel, 2016). Additionally, since men tended to be undersocialized and women tended to be oversocialized, it may be that at least some psychopathic traits in women may manifest differently.…”