Physical appearance and criminality

Throughout the history of psychology the controversial belief in a relationship between physical appearance and criminality has reared its ugly head! Though modern criminologists do not believe that criminals belong to a single physical type, it is possible that the general public, the police, juries, and so forth, may believe in such relationships and act accordingly. The present paper describes some investigations of the extent to which the general public and the police believe that ‘the face fits the crime’. Studies of the facial appearance of prison inmates are reviewed, as is research on the effects of plastic surgery on prison recidivism rates. The relationship between children’s physical appearance and behavioural abnormalities is discussed, as is the literature on the way that we react to children as a function of their facial appearance. Studies concerning society’s reactions to facial disfigurement are presented to show that there may be some support for Cavior, Hayes and Cavior’s (1975) view that ‘low physical attractiveness contributes to careers of deviancy’.     

Grandiose-Manipulative,Callous-Unemotional,and Daring-Impulsive: the Prediction of Psychopathic Traits in Adolescence and their Outcomes in Adulthood

There has been much debate about how to measure psychopathic traits in adolescence. One of the main issues is whether one should focus on callous-unemotional (CU) traits alone, or CU traits in combination with Grandiose-Manipulative (GM) and Daring-Impulsive (DI) traits. The current study first investigates the extent to which youth who are high on CU traits are also high on GM and DI traits. In addition, the study investigates if being high on both CU and GM, and high on both CU and DI, identify groups that are particularly characterized by past and future impairments. To investigate this, data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) was analyzed. The CSDD is a prospective longitudinal study of 411 English boys spanning over 50 years. The information available at age 12–14 was coded on the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD). Childhood risk factors were measured at age 8–10 and later life outcomes were measured at age 32. The results indicate that being high on CU in combination with DI delineates a clinically interesting group who are characterized by high childhood risk and poorer adult life outcomes. The same applied to the high CU/high GM group, but to a lesser extent.     

Physical appearance and criminality

Throughout the history of psychology the controversial belief in a relationship between physical appearance and criminality has reared its ugly head! Though modern criminologists do not believe that criminals belong to a single physical type, it is possible that the general public, the police, juries, and so forth, may believe in such relationships and act accordingly. The present paper describes some investigations of the extent to which the general public and the police believe that ‘the face fits the crime’. Studies of the facial appearance of prison inmates are reviewed, as is research on the effects of plastic surgery on prison recidivism rates. The relationship between children’s physical appearance and behavioural abnormalities is discussed, as is the literature on the way that we react to children as a function of their facial appearance. Studies concerning society’s reactions to facial disfigurement are presented to show that there may be some support for Cavior, Hayes and Cavior’s (1975) view that ‘low physical attractiveness contributes to careers of deviancy’.     

Psychopathic traits of business and psychology students and their relationship to academic success

The notion that high levels of psychopathic trait leads to career success in the business sector has become a popular point of theorising in recent years, with research providing support for the alleged overrepresentation of psychopathy in the financial sector, and the existence of a relationship between psychopathy and professional success. A cross-sectional design was employed to compare psychopathy scores of business and psychology students, as well as to examine the psychopathy-academic success relationship. Participates were 263 participants recruited from a UK university. Results revealed greater psychopathic traits in business students relative to psychology students on all four factors of psychopathy. Furthermore, hierarchical multiple regression indicated that the four psychopathy factors, gender, age, study hours, and course explain 14% of variance in grade outcome. Two variables made unique statistic contributions to the model with antisocial behaviour and gender (male) negatively related to grade outcome. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.     

Authoritarian personalities, 1950-1973

This study concerns a comparison of American college graduates of the post Kent State era with those of the post Hitler era as to authoritarian type personality. A short 17-item scale for authoritarian personality traits was devised and found to correlate with the F Scale. This was administered to 314 college graduates in 1950. It was again administered to 400 graduates of the same college in 1973. The results show that the 1973 group is less authoritarian than the 1950 group.     

Highly dominating, highly authoritarian personalities

The author considered the small part of the population whose members score highly on both the Social Dominance Orientation scale and the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale. Studies of these High SDO-High RWAs, culled from samples of nearly 4000 Canadian university students and over 2600 of their parents and reported in the present article, reveal that these dominating authoritarians are among the most prejudiced persons in society. Furthermore, they seem to combine the worst elements of each kind of personality, being power-hungry, unsupportive of equality, manipulative, and amoral, as social dominators are in general, while also being religiously ethnocentric and dogmatic, as right-wing authoritarians tend to be. The author suggested that, although they are small in number, such persons can have considerable impact on society because they are well-positioned to become the leaders of prejudiced right-wing political movements.     

Personality, gender and violent criminality in prison inmates

The Antisocial Personality Questionnaire developed by Blackburn and Fawcett (1999) has shown adequate reliability and validity in studies of male offenders interned in psychiatric hospitals. This paper provides data on the APQ collected from a sample of offenders (males and females) without any diagnosed mental illness. The sample was made up of 216 offenders (108 males and 108 females) confined in Spanish prisons. We analyzed the psychometric properties of the instrument and we also examined differences in personality as a function of gender and type of crime (violent vs. non-violent). Results support the reliability of the APQ scales as well as the structure proposed by Blackburn. Additionally, we selected items that discriminate between offenders convicted for violent and non-violent crimes; when these items are factorized, a three-factor structure emerges, resembling Eysenck's model.     

Two personalities, one relationship: both partners' personality traits shape the quality of their relationship

This research tested 6 models of the independent and interactive effects of stable personality traits on each partner's reports of relationship satisfaction and quality. Both members of 360 couples (N = 720) completed the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire and were interviewed about their relationship. Findings show that a woman's relationship happiness is predicted by her partner's low Negative Emotionality, high Positive Emotionality, and high Constraint, whereas a man's relationship happiness is predicted only by his partner's low Negative Emotionality. Findings also show evidence of additive but not interactive effects: Each partner's personality contributed independently to relationship outcomes but not in a synergistic way. These results are discussed in relation to models that seek to integrate research on individual differences in personality traits with research on interpersonal processes in intimate relationships.     

Gender, Somatization, and Psychopathic Traits in a College Sample

The structure of psychopathic traits and their association with somatization symptoms were investigated in a sample of 199 undergraduate college students enrolled in introductory psychology classes. Using multiple measures of psychopathic traits, an iterated principal axis (IPA) analysis revealed two dimensions of psychopathy that were similar to ones typically found in forensic samples. One dimension focused on a cold, callous, and unemotional interpersonal style and the second dimension focused on an impulsive and antisocial lifestyle. These two dimensions emerged for both men and women, although the correlation between the two was somewhat higher for men than women. Also, the callous and unemotional dimension was negatively correlated with somatization symptoms, and the impulsive and antisocial dimension was positively associated with somatization symptoms. This pattern of associations was similar for both men and women and it suggests that somatization symptoms may be one aspect of the high rate of negative affectivity experienced by antisocial individuals.     

Associations Between Parental Psychopathic Traits,Parenting, and Adolescent Callous-Unemotional Traits

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., callousness, low empathy, shallow affect) have been conceptualized as a downward extension of the...     

Zeitgeist,Ortgeist, and personalities in the development of Scandinavian psychology

Although the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden are most often perceived as a rather homogeneous set of nations there are interesting diversities in the paths and patterns of the development of psychology. The strong experimental, neurobiological, and cognitive orientation of psychology in Finland and Sweden is contrasted with the more phenomenologically and clinically oriented psychology in Norway and Denmark. The concepts of Zeitgeist, Ortgeist, and personalities are used to explain the different courses of development in the Scandinavian countries. In Denmark and Norway a few dominant personalities in a few dominant university departments seem to have shaped the formation of psychology to a greater extent than in Finland and Sweden. The relatively late start of psychology as an independent academic discipline has opened Sweden and Finland to impulses from the Anglo‐American empirical tradition. Within‐country differences are highlighted with special reference to the Swedish development. Various local “schools” of psychology are characterized with Stockholm as the most notable example. Although psychophysics plays an insignificant role in Swedish psychology today, a pedigree with reference to Gösta Ekman demonstrates its critical and dominating role for the development of psychology in Sweden.     

Sweet taste preferences and experiences predict prosocial inferences, personalities, and behaviors

It is striking that prosocial people are considered "sweet" (e.g., "she's a sweetie") because they are unlikely to differentially taste this way. These metaphors aid communication, but theories of conceptual metaphor and embodiment led us to hypothesize that they can be used to derive novel insights about personality processes. Five studies converged on this idea. Study 1 revealed that people believed strangers who liked sweet foods (e.g., candy) were also higher in agreeableness. Studies 2 and 3 showed that individual differences in the preference for sweet foods predicted prosocial personalities, prosocial intentions, and prosocial behaviors. Studies 4 and 5 used experimental designs and showed that momentarily savoring a sweet food (vs. a nonsweet food or no food) increased participants' self-reports of agreeableness and helping behavior. The results reveal that an embodied metaphor approach provides a complementary but unique perspective to traditional trait views of personality.     

Psychopathic behavior and issues of treatment

The psychopathic personality is traditionally looked on as an antisocial disorder, although both the core symptoms—centering around egocentrism—and philosophical argument for the psychopath's “practical rationality”, suggest behaviors so diagnosed are not all that discrepant with mainstream western societal values. The relation of despised psychopathy to prized Machiavellianism is explored and a treatment strategy is introduced that is in keeping with the Machiavellian-psychopath distinction. In the face of repeated failure of treatment programs, this plan incorporates western society's concrete, historical values rather than the idealized values on the basis of which the diagnosis is presently made.     

Argumentation in ethics, legal dogmatics and legal practice

The author adopts a coherentist approach to legal argumentation.Ceteris paribus, the degree of coherence of argumentation depends on answers to such questions as: How many statements belonging to the justification are supported by reasons, that is, not arbitrary?, How profound is the justification, that is, how long are the chains of reasons it contains?, How closely interconnected are the reasons, for example in such a way that the same conclusion follows from various independent reasons?, How relevant are the reasons in the context in question?, etc.A reasonable legal argumentation is a special case of a reasonable moral argumentation. Both contain moral substantive reasons and legal authority reasons. On the other hand, some particularities of legal argumentation must be noticed, as well. Among other things, the lawyers take for granted that legal reasoning is based on valid law and that some sources of law, such as statutes, are binding.There exist various juristic roles and corresponding types of argumentation, e.g., judicial and doctrinal ones. Yet, all kinds of legal argumentation must use weighing and balancing in order to make the law coherent and morally acceptable. Consequently, all general principles and criteria of coherence are applicable to all these types but their weight varies between them.