Psychopathy in Italian female murderers

Over the years, the number of homicides in Italy has progressively decreased, ultimately becoming one of the lowest rates in Europe (357 = 0.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017, according to ISTAT 1 ISTAT: Italian Institute of Statistics.
). The number of homicides committed by women was about 9% of the total number of homicides during our study period. The percentage has increased in recent years because the total number of homicides has decreased without a proportionate decrease in the number of female homicides. Indeed, murder is an unusual type of crime for a woman and is often associated with a mental disorder, so when a woman committed a homicide, a psychiatric assessment was often performed. A forensic psychiatry expert was assigned to investigate the offender's psychopathology and mental state at the time of the offense. The root causes of the crime remained unexplained, however, due to the lack of a psychiatric precedent to justify this kind of assessment. The role of psychopathy in homicide has seldom been studied in female offenders, even though psychopathy has an important role in violent crimes. The investigators examined, clinically and historically, a sample of women who committed murder with different levels of criminal responsibility (female homicide offenders found not guilty by reason of insanity, having partial criminal responsibility, and convicted as criminally responsible and sentenced to prison) to identify the prevalence of the psychopathic dimension and its possible role in this sample. Prevalence and degree of psychopathic traits were examined in these female offenders using the Psychopathy Checklist‐Revised. This study showed that females who had committed homicide were likely to suffer from mental illness; most of the homicidal acts were committed impulsively; and most female homicides occurred within the family, especially among women who were psychotic, but less so if they were psychopathic. Psychopathy tended to co‐occur more with personality disorders than with psychotic psychopathology. Psychopathy was more evident among female homicide offenders who had been abused or traumatized. Psychopathic women who killed had high factor F1 scores and low antisocial component of factor F2.     

Detrimental educational practices deemed as culturally acceptable: Adultcentrism and Black Pedagogy in Italian primary schools

Social Psychology of Education - In a complex and systemic view of human development, the educational relationship is conceived as the keystone of development (Pianta, 1999; Pianta, 2001). However,...     

Investigating employees’ emotional and cognitive reactions to customer mistreatment: an experimental study

ABSTRACT

With increasing market competitiveness, companies strive to deliver high-quality services. Negative reactions from employees to customer mistreatment erodes the quality of the service provided. This study investigated whether negative emotions and cognitive impairment are mechanisms through which customer mistreatment is related to generalized customer-directed incivility. 157 Italian (Study 1) and 259 Irish (Study 2) research participants completed questionnaires which included an experimental task that manipulated customer misbehaviour levels through scenarios to create three conditions (control, incivility, verbal aggression). Emotional reactions, cognitive impairment and generalized customer-directed incivility intentions as a result of the scenarios were investigated. In both studies, participants in the mistreatment conditions reported more negative emotions, greater cognitive impairment and higher generalized customer-directed incivility intentions than those in the control condition. In Italy (Study 1) negative emotions mediated the relationship between exposure to a customer mistreatment event and generalized customer-directed incivility intentions, but not in Ireland (Study 2), demonstrating the importance of considering contextual conditions in understanding such mediating mechanisms. This study extends research by showing how a single encounter with a misbehaving customer can contribute to the development of incivility intentions towards customers as entities. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.