Psychopathic features in young incarcerated females

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between psychopathic features as measured with the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) and behavioural and emotional functioning in young female offenders in custody. Design/methodology/approach -This is a quantitative interview study investigating the relationship with psychopathic traits, measured with the PCL:YV (Forth et al., 2003), and different psychological characteristics as well as AD/HD, self-harm, and childhood trauma in adolescent offenders across genders. Data were collected from a sample of 40 female and 40 male adolescents who were incarcerated in Victoria, Australia. Findings -Results indicated that the behavioural subscales of the PCL:YV were associated with externalising behaviours possibly underpinned by histories of abuse and substantiated child protection incidences. The presence of AD/HD was strongly associated with affective deficits suggesting that the PCL:YV may be identifying young females with AD/HD rather than core psychopathic traits. Findings also indicate that female-specific manifestations of manipulation are likely being misidentified as behavioural phenomena precluding clinical recognition as a core interpersonal trait. Significant dissimilarities with a young male comparison group were identified and are discussed within.Research limitations/implications -The sample size is very small and the results should be seen as an indication rather than generalising. Originality/value -Studies on female juvenile offenders is rare and this study adds to the literature on the construct of psychopathy and its relationship to psychosocial factors as well as associations with AD/HD, self-harm, and childhood trauma, among incarcerated adolescents.

The PCL–R family of psychopathy measures

“…Item-level analyses revealed that seven of the 20 PCL: YV items, including "lack of remorse" and "callous/lack of empathy", significantly correlated with ADHD, suggesting that the PCL: YV may be identifying girls with ADHD as opposed to core psychopathic personality traits. Additionally, heightened scores on affective, lifestyle, and antisocial PCL: YV dimensions formed significant positive correlations with selfharming behaviors among girls but not among boys (Strand, Luebbers, & Shepherd, 2016).…”

The role of the dark triad and emotion regulation in women’ sexual coercion: a social information processing perspective

“…The literature has shown that female-specific behaviours (e.g. relational aggression) are not effectively assessed by classic psychopathic tools (Strand et al , 2016). Future research should consider exploring if the assessment of women’s psychopathic traits may require the use of specific tools as women and men do not display the same pattern of psychopathic personalities.…”

Why might psychopathy develop? Beyond a protective function: a commentary on Zara et al. (2023)

“…An important task for future research is to integrate adaptive perspectives of psychopathy with broader issues in the psychopathy literature. For instance, how might an adaptive function of protection and/or exploitation relate to gender and how might this inform the construct of psychopathy across gender (Strand et al , 2016)? Because males and females differ in the reproductive challenges they face (Buss, 2017), it may be important to examine how sexual and relationship factors are involved in adaptive perspectives of psychopathy across gender (Forth et al , 2022).…”