Executive functioning, psychopathy, and moral reasoning among male violent offenders

摘要

Over 1.3 million violent crimes are committed in the United States each year. Violent offenders have long been the focus of a growing body of literature and the examination of neuropsychological influences on violent behavior is becoming increasingly more prevalent. This study sought to investigate the relationships between executive neuropsychological functioning, psychopathy, and moral reasoning among male violent offenders. Participants were 33 (18 violent, 15 nonviolent) randomly-selected male inmates (mean age = 41 years, IQ = 97, education = 11 years; 61% African American, 36% Caucasian), incarcerated in a Virginia medium-security state correctional facility. Original data collection included an institutional record review, comprehensive clinical interview, and psych/neuropsychological testing utilizing the following measures: PCL-R:2 nd Edition to assess level of psychopathy; DIT-2 to assess level of moral reasoning; Sorting and Color Word Interference subtests from the D-KEFS to assess executive functioning (problem solving and inhibition, respectively); Handedness Inventory to assess hand preference; Matrix Reasoning from the WASI to estimate general intellectual functioning; and Rey 15 Item Test to assess effort. Extensive personal and criminal history demographics and descriptive data were also collected.;Spearman's rho and Kendall partial rank correlations were computed to analyze relationships between variables, and a series of Mann-Whitney U's were computed to examine the differences between the violent and nonviolent offender groups. Results did not support the hypothesis that psychopathy is significantly related to moral reasoning in a male inmate sample. The hypothesis that violent offenders and nonviolent offenders significantly differ on level of psychopathy, level of moral reasoning, and executive functioning impairment also was not supported. However, a noteworthy finding was a trend in which violent offenders scored higher (better) than nonviolent offenders on an executive function measure of response inhibition. This interesting and unexpected finding requires further study. Finally, findings from this study did not support the hypothesis that moral reasoning, executive functioning, and psychopathy covary among violent offenders. There were, however, several noteworthy trends in this analysis including a potential relationship between psychopathy and executive functioning/problem-solving, and a possible relationship between moral reasoning ability and executive functioning/problem-solving ability. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.