Synonyms
Definition
Psychopathy is a personality trait, characterized by risky, impulsive behaviors and callous, unemotional, and exploitive interpersonal orientation.
Introduction
Although psychopathy is a well-known, categorical construct in the field of clinical and forensic psychology, researchers have suggested that it would be better considered as a trait that varies in a continuum (Edens et al. 2006). Individuals at the high end of the continuum exhibit antisocial behaviors and have callous, unemotional, interpersonal styles. There has been much recent research investigating trait psychopathy in student and community samples, which is of great help in improving our understanding of how psychopathy functions in everyday life.
With regard to existing personality paradigms, psychopathy can be, at least partially, understood as normal variation within other personality dimensions. For instance, psychopathy has been linked to...
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References
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Lyons, M., Centifanti, L., Foell, J. (2016). Psychopathy. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1099-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1099-1
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