Patrick Bateman. Hannibal Lecter. Ted Bundy. The guy who used to live downstairs from me. Psychopaths, every one. Except defining psychopathy, let alone measuring it, turns out to be surprisingly controversial among psychologists and forensic scientists.

In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at the latest attempts to define and model psychopathy, the evidence on the questionnaires used to measure it, and whether The Sopranos was right in saying that therapy only makes psychopaths worse.

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Show notes

* The Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy strongly criticise Jon Ronson’s book The Psychopath Test

* 2021 Nature Reviews Disease Primers article on psychopathy

* Critical discussion of whether the psychopath label should be applied to children

* Christopher Patrick’s review of psychopathy research and discussion of his “triarchic” model of psychopathy

* 2020 review-of-reviews on whether psychopathy checklist scores predict violence, therapy outcomes, or remorse

* The 2020 letter from “concerned experts” about PCL-R scores and institutional violence

* Review on psychopathy scores and “dangerousness” from 2022

* The controversial 1992 study on iatrogenic effects on psychopaths in therapy

* “Are psychopathy assessments ethical?”

Credits

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.