Interpersonal construct systems among psychopaths

To examine social cognitive anomalies in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic p articipants, 56 inmates were administered a computerized adaptation of the role construct repertory test (Kelly, G. A. (1955), The psychology of perso nal constructs. New York: Norton) and given bipolar constructs (e.g. friend ly-unfriendly) to evaluate intel personal behavior corresponding to the oct ants of the interpersonal circumplex (Wiggins, J. S. (1979). A psychologica l taxonomy of trait descriptive terms: the interpersonal domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 395-412.). Partially consistent wit h the suggestion of hostile attributional bias, Caucasian psychopaths emplo yed the aggressive/non-aggressive construct more frequently than nonpsychop aths; however, they did not demonstrate a consistent bias towards appraisin g others' behavior as aggressive. By contrast, among African-American parti cipants, social cognitive abnormalities were either a joint function of psy chopathy and negative affectivity or a function of negative affectivity alo ne. These results underscore prier suggestions that cognitive and behaviora l concomitants of psychopathy may be differentially expressed as a function of race. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.