Subscribe
The latest psychology and neuroscience discoveries.
My Account
  • Mental Health
  • Social Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psychopharmacology
No Result
View All Result
PsyPost
PsyPost
No Result
View All Result
Home Exclusive Social Psychology Dark Triad Psychopathy

Homicide offenders have lower levels of psychopathy and sadism compared to other convicts, study finds

by Eric W. Dolan
August 8, 2022 - Updated on October 14, 2022
in Psychopathy, Social Psychology

Enhance your understanding of the human mind and mental health trends by following PsyPost on MSN.
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

New research casts doubt on the conventional wisdom linking psychopathy to murder. The findings, which appear in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences, provide evidence that homicide offenders tend to be less psychopathic on average compared to other criminal offenders.

“Exploring personality traits in criminal offenders is important for several reasons: these data can help investigative authorities to find the perpetrator, findings can elevate the success rate of psychological treatment of offenders and even facilitate prevention of criminal behavior,” explained study author Janko Međedović, a senior scientific associate at the Institute of Criminological and Sociological Research in Belgrade.

“The best candidates for explaining criminal behavior are the ‘dark’ personality traits: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism and sadism. Previous research showed that psychopathy is associated to the homicide offence; furthermore, the obtained associations were high in magnitude – this suggest that murderers are highly likely to have psychopathic traits.”

“We were intrigued by this finding, mostly because murder can be very heterogenous regarding the context of the offense and the motivation of perpetrator,” Međedović explained. “For example, an individual that murders a spouse and doesn’t have any previous history of criminal behavior, and a person who commits murder as a member of organized criminal group may have quite different personality profiles.”

For their new study, the researchers measured psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism in a group of male convicts. The study examined 247 convicts from two of the largest penitentiary facilities in Serbia. The sample included 46 homicide offenders, 82 non-homicide violent offenders, and 119 non-violent offenders.

Criminal recidivism, including the number of criminal offences, the number of legal sentences, and the number of prison sentences served, was also assessed using the convicts’ prison dossiers.

“We found that the dark traits were positively associated with criminal recidivism (similarly to previous studies), but the homicide offenders had lower levels of psychopathy and sadism compared to other groups of offenders, especially to the non-homicide violent offenders,” Međedović told PsyPost.

“We believe that this can be partially explained by the fact that homicide offenders from our sample also had lower recidivism rates compared to other groups. Therefore, murderers may not be characterized by highly pronounced dark traits – homicide offences are heterogeneous in many criminologically-relevant aspects and the personality traits of homicide offenders can be different as well.”

“Thus, we need to explore personality dispositions of homicide offenders in more detail, by analyzing the characteristics of the offence as well,” Međedović said. “For example, it is probable, as found in previous studies, that murderers who were not close to their victims and who committed more premeditated and planned acts of murder may indeed be characterized by higher levels of psychopathic traits.”

The findings are in line with at least one other study, which examined 478 convicts from three prisons in the state of Pennsylvania. That study, published in 2017, found that homicide offenders tended to have lower levels of psychopathy compared to recidivistic offenders and similar levels of psychopathy compared to first-time offenders.

But as with any research, the new study includes some caveats.

“Our study has several limitations. For example, we did not have additional information about the characteristics of homicide offenses in our data; this is partially due to relatively low sample size of the participants who commit murder in our research,” Međedović explained. “Secondly, we used self-report inventories to measure the dark traits; it would be highly beneficial to combine these measures with the rating assessments (provided by skilled professionals) to analyze the data (rating measures exist only for psychopathy so far) because these two methods may provide different findings.”

“Various socio-economic conditions and their interactions with personality traits should be studied as well in order to provide a more detailed understanding of criminal behavior,” Međedović said. “So far, our research contributes to the psychology of criminal behavior by showing that the dark personality traits can advance our knowledge about the stability of criminal behavior and the type of criminal offence; hence, future studies can benefit by including them in the research designs.”

The study, “How dark is the personality of murderers? Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and sadism in homicide offenders“, was authored by Janko Međedović and Nikola Vujičić.

ShareTweetSendScanShareSharePin9Send

Thanks for reading! Click here to support PsyPost by becoming a paid subscriber. In an age where information is abundant but quality knowledge is scarce, PsyPost ensures that you stay updated on the most recent and relevant discoveries made in psychology and neuroscience.

STAY CONNECTED

TRENDING

Female cat and dog owners tend to be slightly more involved with their families, potentially leading to better well-being, study finds

Autism and stress: A pivotal study highlights unique emotional challenges

Scientists raise the alarm about the growing trend of “soft” censorship of research

Income boosts self-esteem more than vice versa, new study reveals

New study on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sheds light on public attitudes towards interracial relationships

Owners of sex dolls are less prone to sexual aggression, but also have lower sexual self-esteem

RECENT

New neuroscience research upends traditional theories of early language learning in babies

Liberal media outlets display a higher aversion to artificial intelligence than conservative media, study finds

Birth control pills and depression: Large study reveals new insights

Income boosts self-esteem more than vice versa, new study reveals

Autism and stress: A pivotal study highlights unique emotional challenges

Female cat and dog owners tend to be slightly more involved with their families, potentially leading to better well-being, study finds

Harmony in heartbeats: Berlin concert study reveals synchrony in classical music listeners

New octopus-inspired robot arm enhances human-machine interaction

  • Cognitive Science
  • COVID-19
  • Mental Health
  • Social Psychology
  • Drug Research
  • Conspiracy Theories
  • Meditation
  • Psychology of Religion
  • Aviation Psychology and Human Factors
  • Relationships and Sexual Health
  • Evolutionary Psychology
  • Neuroimaging
  • Psychedelic Drugs
  • Dark Triad
  • Political Psychology
  • Contact us
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms and Conditions
Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Cognitive Science Research
  • Mental Health Research
  • Social Psychology Research
  • Drug Research
  • Relationship Research
  • About PsyPost
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Add New Playlist

Manage your privacy
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Statistics

Marketing

Features
Always active

Always active
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Manage options
{title} {title} {title}
Manage your privacy

To provide the best experiences, we and our partners use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us and our partners to process personal data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site and show (non-) personalized ads. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.

Click below to consent to the above or make granular choices. Your choices will be applied to this site only. You can change your settings at any time, including withdrawing your consent, by using the toggles on the Cookie Policy, or by clicking on the manage consent button at the bottom of the screen.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Statistics

Marketing

Features
Always active

Always active
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
Manage options
{title} {title} {title}