On Sat, 15 Sep 2012 17:48:25 -0700, Beth Benoit wrote: > >I know the "psychopathic vs. thrill-seeking personality" distinction is how >we recognize the difference between those with a mental disorder and those >with personality traits that can be positive. But I was chagrined to see >our Scott Lilienfeld's name hooked up with this story. Any input for us, >Scott? Out of context? > >http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/13/psychopathic-personality-traits-president_n_1874567.html
If you look at the original article in JPSP, you'll see the context and more of the analyses that serve as the basis for the HuffPost article. If you click on the blue highlighted JPSP and copy the title from the APA entry into scholar.google.com you'll find a website where you can download the article. That being said, it's not an article you want to read on a Saturday night unless you truly have no life -- I'm going to wait until tomorrow to give it a serious read. I think the real question is whether one accepts the research's methods and assumptions. A quick skim seems to indicate that conclusions are consistent with results but I'd like to critically examine the method and theoretical framework. This isn't a one shot research project but builds upon other research which, unfortunately, one would have to be familiar with in order to make a more reasonable judgment about the research (i.e., more reading). That being said, I wonder whether the same results and conclusions would be reached if the research has included measures of authoritarianism (e.g., Altemeyer's Right Wing Authoritarianism [RWA] scale, a measure of submission to authority) and social dominance (e.g., Pratto & Sidanious Social Dominance Orientation [SDO], a measure of need to dominate others or, alternatively, degree of departure from a belief of the equality of people). John Dean (of Watergate fame) has argued that "double-highs" -- people who are high on both RWA and SDO, a small proportion of people because the RWA tends to be uncorrelated with SDO) is one way to characterize a number of politicians and some presidents (Dean suggests Nixon and George W were double-highs). One final point, Martha Stout (who was at SUNY-Stony Brook when I was a grad student but she was in clinical) is quoted in the HuffPost article as saying the psychopathy and sociopathy were interchangeable. If memory serves, psychopathy relies on psychological factors like traits or attitudes while sociopathy relies on environmental and social relations to explain why antisocial behavior occurs. That is, they are different theoretical orientations toward the same phenomenon. Have people stopped making this kind of distinction? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=20432 or send a blank email to leave-20432-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
