Cold blooded criminals use violence indiscriminately

Psychopaths are more likely to use violence in a cold blooded, calculated way than non-psychopathic violent offenders.

This is the finding of a study being presented today, Thursday 25th June 2009, at the British Psychological Society Division of Forensic Psychology Annual Conference at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston.

John Cordwell, in association with Queen Mary College, University of London, studied 492 violent offenders with convictions from common assault to GBH and manslaughter. He compared their levels of psychopathy (as measured on the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised) to an analysis of the violence they used in their crimes.

John Cordwell said: "Psychopaths tend to be callous, un-empathic, cunning, and frequently lie. We discovered that offenders who scored highly on the measure of psychopathy committed significantly more instrumental violence than the other offenders - they used violence to achieve goals such as obtaining money, sex or drugs, and there could be little or no emotional component to this violence.

"These results indicate that highly psychopathic criminals are more likely than non-psychopaths to use violence to get what they want, and could be seen as ‘cold blooded’. However, these highly psychopathic offenders are also no less likely than other offenders to become violent in a reactive and impulsive way as a result of a highly emotional state. This study further asks the question of whether reactivity is a genuine phenomenon of psychopathy or actually a phenomenon of violence itself.

The conference is being held at the University of Central Lancashire from the 23rd to 25th July. The full programme is available on the Society’s website /DFP2009

For more information contact the Media Centre on 0116 2529500 or email mediacentre@bps.org.uk