FORENSIC ASSESSMENT

OF PSYCHOPATHS
By: Danyal Ahmad Jamal
(COMSATS, Islamabad)
 PSYCHOPATHY

• A kind of personality Disorder in which an individual would manifest antisocial & amoral behaviors.
• No official diagnosis within the fifth edition but would fit into a subset of an official diagnosis of antisocial
personality disorder.
I. Disregard for social norms and laws
II. Lack of guilt or remorse
III. Repeated lying
IV. Impulsivity and irresponsibility
V. Aggressiveness
VI. Disregard for the safety of others

• 1% of total world’s population have psychopathic tendencies (Robert Hare), but according to Martha Stout its around
4%.
 PSYCHOPATHIC TRAITS
• Feeling few (if any) emotions
• Sadism (pleasure from causing pain to others)
• Lack of care for others (Lack empathy)
• Repeated lying
• Lack of fear
• Risk-taking behavior
• Shallow Affect (impairment in ability to react emotionally)
• Inability to love
• No remorse for wrongdoing
• Poor judgment and Impulsivity
• swinging sexual behavior
• Use relationships purely for gain
 THE DARK TRIAD

• The term “Dark Triad” refers to a trio of negative personality traits:

1. Narcissism
2. Machiavellianism
3. Psychopathy
THE DARK TRIAD
 INTERESTING FACT

1 to 4% total world’s population have

psychopathic tendencies, there are high
chances that you met a Psychopath just
few hours ago.   
 CAUSES OF PSYCHOPATHY
• Genetic
Research tells us that psychopathy tends to run in families. 60% to 70% of
psychopathy is genetic (Dr. Galynker)
• Environmental
• Biological
Amygdala (part of brain) involved in social responsiveness, empathy, and outcomes
related to fear. Less development of amygdala
• Childhood experiences
• Not everyone with psychopathy will goes towards violent and criminal behaviour. Some
leading factors towards criminal behavior are:
 Lower Socioeconomic background
Lower IQ level
Less education
 Triggering experiences
Violent Family environment
 FORENSIC ASSESSMENT OF
PSYCHOPATHS
Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist- Revised (PCL-R)
It is the gold standard for the assessment of psychopathy or State of the art for
assessment.
I. Initially scale was designed to measure the clinical construct of psychopathy; however,
because of its demonstrated ability to predict recidivism (relapse rate of criminals),
violence, and treatment outcome, they routinely are used in forensic assessments
II. 20-items clinical construct rating scale that uses a semistructured interview, case history
information, and specific scoring criteria to rate each item on a 3-point scale.
• Total scores can range from 0 to 40 and reflect the degree to which the person matches the
typical psychopathic person (cutoff score 30).
According to Blair’s Model, psychopathy comes from dysfunction of amygdala
& frontal cortex. It might also be due to paralimbic regions.
Blair’s concept was amygdala has many functions including understanding
facial expressions especially those of fears and reinforcement learning.
Researches shown that psychopaths present with diminished capacity to process
emotional information.
Psychopaths have less ability to identifying fearful/sad facial expressions than non-
psychopaths.
This is the cause of less empathy or more violence in psychopaths.
• Forensic Psychologists examined brain activation patterns of psychopaths & non
psychopaths by showing stimulus of people in pain.
• Psychopaths shown significantly less activation in prefrontal cortex part of brain as
compared to non-psychopaths.
• These biological reasons lead the focus on brain dysfunction.
Use of Brain Imaging
In 90s, use of Functional Magnetic resonance Imaging (FMRI) began.
FMRI helps in understanding blood flow in brain during certain tasks and brain activeness level.
Neuro imaging helps to understand condition & identifying neural mechanisms of a person.
FMRI suggests that empathy deficits in psychopaths is due to developmental abnormalities of
amygdala.
• Use of MRI
Magnetic reasoning imaging can be used as assessment of psychopaths.
MRI results shown reduction in grey matter of brain can lower emotional processing. Thus,
could be a significant cause of psychopathy.
By MRI reports, an offender can be distinguished either psychopath or non psychopath.
If Psychopathy has biological roots, how
psychopaths should be treated by law system?
 ADDITIONAL ASSESMENTS
• Informal & Formal Interview
• History taking
• Previous criminal record
• Noticing facial & nonverbal expressions