Psychopathy and developmental instability

Psychopaths are manipulative, impulsive, and callous individuals with long histories of antisocial behavior. Two models have guided the study of psych opathy. One suggests that psychopathy is a psychopathology, i.e., the outco me of defective or perturbed development. A second suggests that psychopath y is a life-history strategy of social defection and aggression that was re productively viable in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA). T hese two models make different predictions with regard to the presence of s igns of perturbations or instability in the development of psychopaths. Tn Study 1, we obtained data on prenatal, perinatal, and neonatal signs of dev elopmental perturbations from the clinical files of 643 nonpsychopathic and 157 psychopathic male offenders. In Study 2, we measured fluctuating asymm etry (FA, a concurrent sign of past developmental perturbations) in 15 psyc hopathic male offenders, 25 nonpsychopathic male offenders, and 31 male non offenders. Psychopathic offenders scored lower than nonpsychopathic offende rs on obstetrical problems and FA; both psychopathic and nonpsychopathic of fenders scored higher than nonoffenders on FA. The five offenders from Stud y 2 meeting the most stringent criteria for psychopathy were similar to non offenders with regard to FA and had the lowest asymmetry scores among offen ders. These results provide no support for psychopathological models of psy chopathy and partial support for life-history strategy models. (C) 2001 Els evier Science Inc. All rights reserved.