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Psychopathy pp 253–268Cite as

Reasons to Expect Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) to Vary Across Cultures

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Part of the book series: History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences ((HPTL,volume 27))

Abstract

I present two philosophical arguments that Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) and Psychopathy can be expected to be culturally variable. I argue that the ways in which people with ASPD and psychopaths can be expected to act will vary with societal values and culture. In the second part of the chapter, I will briefly review some of the empirical literature on cross-cultural variation in ASPD and psychopathy and argue that it is consistent with my philosophical claims. My conclusion in this chapter is that methods of diagnosis will need to be culturally specific. A diagnostic instrument (such as the PCL-R or DSM) should not be uncritically employed in cultures that are very different from those in which it was initially developed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This issue is also addressed by Malatesti and McMillan (2014), who think psychopathy plausibly constitutes a ‘robust scientific construct’ and by Brzović et al. (2017) who argue that psychopathy may be too heterogeneous to constitute a natural kind but can instead be considered a ‘pragmatic kind’.

  2. 2.

    Part of the reason why the PCL-R is often taken to define psychopathy, is that the PCL-R test is presented within a particular theoretical framework, making easy for readers to take the test to operationalise a concept of psychopathy.

  3. 3.

    Hare developed the PCL-R. He comments ‘The extent to which knowledge of the scoring criteria for the PCL-R items would influence an offender’s score is uncertain and in need of investigation. However, assuming that the rater is reasonably skilled and that proper scoring procedures are used, the problem may not be too serious. I doubt, for example, that a psychopathic offender, knowing how item 6, callous/lack of empathy, is scored, could convince experienced clinicians that he was a warm, caring individual and that he warranted a score of 1 or 0 on the item. PCL-R items are scored by carefully integrating interview and file information. Further, an item score reflects lifetime functioning and is not sensitive to short-term changes in personality or behavioural patterns (Hare, 1998, p.111)’ I fear that Hare’s optimism in the abilities of scorers may be misplaced. See later discussion of empirical study on how easy it is to ‘fake’ PCL-R scores by Rogers et al. (2002).

  4. 4.

    Smith and Lilienfeld review discussions in the media and academic studies. Note that they suggest that popular claims that psychopaths ‘do well’ in business may be over-played.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Rachel Cooper

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  1. Rachel Cooper
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Correspondence to Rachel Cooper .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia

    Luca Malatesti

  2. Bioethics Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    John McMillan

  3. Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia

    Predrag Šustar

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Cooper, R. (2022). Reasons to Expect Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) to Vary Across Cultures. In: Malatesti, L., McMillan, J., Šustar, P. (eds) Psychopathy. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82454-9_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82454-9_14

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