Psychopathy, Neutorticism and Verbal Conditioning: A Replication and Extension

摘要

In a previous paper (Johns and Quay, 1962) it was found that criminal offenders in the military service who had scored high on a factorially derived questionnaire for the measurement of Psychopathic Delinquency failed to condition in a standard verbal conditioning paradigm when compared with a group of offenders who had scored high on a similarly derived scale for Neurotic Delinquency and with a group of controls. The results of this experiment were interpreted as support for the hypothesis that the psychopathic individual is comparatively unresponsive to social reinforcement. This interpretation was in turn related to Cleckley's (1955) concept of Semantic Dementia. Raised, but unanswered, was the question of the relationship of poor conditionability in this group to manifest anxiety and extraversion. Ss for this study were all incarcerated in an institution for more serious offenders in the U. S. Navy. A sample of 458 prisoners, almost the entire population of the facility, was administered the Psychopathy and Neuroticism factor scales (Peterson, Quay and Tiffany, 1961) used in the previous study. Means were computed for the entire sample and one group was then identified who had scored above the mean on Psychopathy and below the mean on Neuroticism; another group was identified who had scored above the mean on Neuroticism and below the mean on Psychopathy.