engleski

Psychopathy and reactions to distress : Can psychopathic traits be adaptive?

Psychopathy is a complex construct that includes a set of related personality characteristics and behavior: manipulative and exploitative interpersonal style, emotional callousness, impulsivity and engagement in antisocial behavior. These characteristics form two higher- order latent dispositions, simply labeled as Factor 1 (callous and manipulative orientation) and Factor 2 (impulsivity and antisocial behavior). While psychopathic traits are usually considered as maladaptive, in certain situations they can be adaptive, like in reactions to distress. Moreover, some of these traits appear to be more adaptive than others. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore relations between psychopathic traits and some forms of psychological distress in a non-clinical sample. The sample consisted of 651 students from various faculties of the University of Zagreb (389 female, 260 male), with a mean age of 21.73 years (SD = 1.94). Negative emotional states were measured by the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21 ; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995), while psychopathy was assessed with the Self-Report Psychopathy scale (SRP-III ; Paulhus et al., in press). Results of the regression analyses showed that psychopathic traits were not related to stress or depression. However, Factor 2 was positively related to anxiety, predicting a small, but signifcant amount of variance. These results indicate that some psychopathic traits (i.e., impulsivity and tendency towards antisocial behavior) are positively related to anxiety, while, on the other hand, callous and manipulative orientation is not related to psychological distress, which highlights the importance of distinguishing between different forms of psychopathic traits.

Psychopathic traits ; Psychological distress

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