Date of Award

Spring 8-1-2004

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

June Sprock

Second Advisor

Michael J. Murphy

Third Advisor

Virgil Sheets

Abstract

The current diagnostic criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) have been criticized for being too behavioral and not sufficiently tied to the historical concept of a psychopathic character. Research suggests that clinicians may not find the current diagnostic criteria useful and that a different set of criteria may be more descriptive of the way they conceptualize ASPD. In addition, questions remain as to the relationship between ASPD and psychopathy (PP). The current study examined clinicians' prototypes of ASPD and PP to determine which criteria are most consistent with how clinicians conceptualize these constructs and to determine whether ASPD and PP represent distinct, overlapping or synonymous constructs. Two matched, national samples of 450 randomly selected practicing psychologists were invited to participate in the study which was conducted via a web page on the Internet. One f,'TOup was asked to think of a hypothetical person who is prototypic for ASPD and the other group was asked to think of a hypothetical person who is prototypic for PP. A total of 99 psychologists completed the study and had usable data, 46 for the ASPD group and 53 for the PP group. Demographic and professional information was also collected. Participants rated which symptoms they consider most descriptive of the person using a symptom checklist comprised of both behavioral and characterological symptoms drawn from the work of Cleckley, Hare's Psychopathy Checklist - Revised, the DSM-III-R, and the DSM-IV. Mean ratings were examined for individual symptoms and grouped into the four sources and by symptom type in order to identify the most representative symptoms of ASPD and PP. Clinicians rated a combination of behavioral and trait-based symptoms as representative of both ASPD and PP, and there was considerable overlap in their prototypes. In contrast to the hypothesis, the DSM-IV criteria were rated more representative than symptoms from Hare's PCL-R. Between group analyses revealed few significant differences in mean symptom ratings between ASPD and PP. Principal components analysis was used to determine the underlying factor structure of the two exemplars and cluster analysis was performed to identify subgroups of participants. Hare's two-factor model of PP was not supported, and there were few meaningful differences in subclusters of participants based on demographic and professional characteristics. Overall, results suggested considerable consensus in the prototypic symptoms of ASPD and PP. This study provided data to serve as an empirical basis for recommendations for future criteria for ASPD.

Download

Share

COinS