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Psychopathy: Neurohype and Its Consequences

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Psychopathy

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

Abstract

Many argue that psychopaths suffer from a stable pattern of neurobiological dysfunctions that should be taken into account in sentencing and treatment decisions. These arguments are compelling only if the neuroimaging data are consistent. It is possible that such consistency is created by reviewers who ignore contradictory findings. To evaluate this, we examined how accurately forensic literature reported neuroimaging findings on psychopaths in a theoretically central structure – the amygdala. We found that forensic commentators consistently under-reported null-findings, creating a misleading impression of the data’s consistency. We discuss this misrepresentation from the perspectives of spin and neurohype, and examine their causes and consequences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The court did not allow actual fMRI images to be shown, however, but did allow general diagrams of the brain.

  2. 2.

    Null findings have been present since 2001. Their absence from the applied literature, therefore, is not a function of their unavailability for early publications.

  3. 3.

    For example, Raine does not mention a null finding in de Oliveira-Souza et al. (2008) in several applied publication, but notes it in an empirical publication (Pardini et al., 2014).

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  1. Okanagan College, Penticton, BC, Canada

    Jarkko Jalava & Stephanie Griffiths

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  1. Jarkko Jalava
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Correspondence to Jarkko Jalava .

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  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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Jalava, J., Griffiths, S. (2022). Psychopathy: Neurohype and Its Consequences. 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_6

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