Citation

Culhane SE, Walker S, Hildebrand MM. J. Police Crim. Psychol. 2019; 34(1): 1-13.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11896-017-9245-x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The current research reports 61 male serial murderers' responses to self-report questionnaires designed to assess levels of psychopathy and criminal thinking. Three separate measures of psychopathy were included. Contrary to our predictions, results indicated that our sample of serial murderers did not demonstrate strong evidence of psychopathy. Rather, the percentage of inmates who could be classified as having psychopathic tendencies is on par with the general population of prisoners. Only half of the participants had an interpretable criminal thinking style scale. Temperament and power issues were the two factors of greatest significance for understanding the serial homicide perpetrators' criminal cognition. In line with expectations, multiple significant correlations were observed for the measures. Implications and limitations of the research are discussed.

Language: en

Keywords

Criminal thinking; PICTS; PPI-R; Psychopathy; Serial murder