Citation

Walsh Z, Kosson DS. Law Hum. Behav. 2007; 31(2): 209-229.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, 3333 Green Bay Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, USA. zcwalsh@hotmail.com

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1007/s10979-006-9057-5

PMID

17123157

Abstract

The relationship between psychopathy and violence is well-established. However, few studies have examined the extent to which this relationship is influenced by sociodemographic predictors of violent criminality. In this prospective study we examine the power of psychopathy to predict criminal violence across ethnicity and levels of socioeconomic status in 199 European American and African American U.S. county jail inmates. A Psychopathy x SES x Ethnicity interaction was identified such that among European Americans psychopathy predicted recidivism at lower levels of SES but was unrelated to recidivism at higher levels of SES. The predictive power of psychopathy was relatively stable across SES among African Americans. The implications of our results for psychopathy and violence prediction are discussed.

Language: en