TY - JOUR
T1 - A meta-analysis of childhood maltreatment in relation to psychopathic traits
AU - de Ruiter, Corine
AU - Burghart, Matthias
AU - De Silva, Raneesha
AU - Griesbeck Garcia, Sara
AU - Mian, Ushna
AU - Walshe, Eoin
AU - Zouharova, Veronika
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 de Ruiter et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2022/8/10
Y1 - 2022/8/10
N2 - Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a mix of traits belonging to four facets: affective (e.g., callous/lack of empathy), interpersonal (e.g., grandiosity), behavioral instability (e.g., impulsivity, poor behavioral controls), and social deviance (e.g., juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility). Several scholars have argued that early childhood maltreatment impacts the development of psychopathy, although views regarding its role in the four facets differ. We conducted a meta-analysis including 47 studies comprising a total of 389 effect sizes and 12,737 participants, to investigate the association between psychopathy and four types of child maltreatment: physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse. We found support for a moderate link between overall psychopathy and childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect, as well as overall childhood maltreatment. The link between psychopathy and childhood sexual abuse was small, but still statistically significant. These associations were stronger for the behavioral and antisocial facets than for the affective and interpersonal facets of psychopathy, but nearly all associations were statistically significant. Our findings are consistent with recently developed theories on the role of complex trauma in the development of severe personality disorders. Trauma-focused preventive and therapeutic interventions can provide further tests of the trauma-psychopathy hypothesis.
AB - Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a mix of traits belonging to four facets: affective (e.g., callous/lack of empathy), interpersonal (e.g., grandiosity), behavioral instability (e.g., impulsivity, poor behavioral controls), and social deviance (e.g., juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility). Several scholars have argued that early childhood maltreatment impacts the development of psychopathy, although views regarding its role in the four facets differ. We conducted a meta-analysis including 47 studies comprising a total of 389 effect sizes and 12,737 participants, to investigate the association between psychopathy and four types of child maltreatment: physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse. We found support for a moderate link between overall psychopathy and childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect, as well as overall childhood maltreatment. The link between psychopathy and childhood sexual abuse was small, but still statistically significant. These associations were stronger for the behavioral and antisocial facets than for the affective and interpersonal facets of psychopathy, but nearly all associations were statistically significant. Our findings are consistent with recently developed theories on the role of complex trauma in the development of severe personality disorders. Trauma-focused preventive and therapeutic interventions can provide further tests of the trauma-psychopathy hypothesis.
KW - Antisocial Personality Disorder/epidemiology
KW - Child
KW - Child Abuse/psychology
KW - Child, Preschool
KW - Criminals/psychology
KW - Humans
KW - Juvenile Delinquency
KW - Physical Abuse
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0272704
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0272704
M3 - Article
C2 - 35947555
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 17
JO - PLOS ONE
JF - PLOS ONE
IS - 8
M1 - e0272704
ER -