Psychopath Test Determines Fate of Some Criminals
A psychopath checklist developed by a Canadian psychologist is determining the fate of criminals in America.
Robert Hare developed the test based on his study of psychopaths that began in the 1960s, NPR reports. At the time, he tells NPR, the conventional wisdom was that environment, not inborn personality, made people into criminals. Hare didn’t agree.
“We have individual differences in intelligence,” Hare said. “Well, we should have individual differences in the personality traits that are responsible or related to crime.”
Hare’s studies of prisoners found that psychopaths showed hardly any emotions, measured by differences in heart rate, when they knew they were about to face an intense electrical shock, the story says. They also showed very little differences in reaction to horrific pictures of, say, a rape, than to neutral pictures.
Hare’s studies helped him develop a checklist of the psychopath personality. The traits he saw included lack of empathy, lack of remorse, manipulation, egocentricity, impulsivity, superficial charm and psychological lying. A later study by one of Hare’s students found that prisoners with high psychopath ratings on the test had a much higher chance of recidivism.
According to NPR, Hare’s checklist now “has incredible power in the American criminal justice system. It’s used to make decisions such as what kind of sentence a criminal gets and whether an inmate is released on parole. It has even been used to help decide whether someone should be put to death.”
Hare tells NPR he’s worried about inappropriate uses of his test by individuals without proper training. “It shouldn’t work that way,” he said.
