Psychopathy and Criminal Justice System Processing: A Sibling Comparison Model Examination of Between- and Within-family Effects

• In Event: Refining the Analysis of Individual Differences in Criminology: Biosocial Contributions

Abstract

A sustained line of research has illustrated the association between psychopathic personality traits (PPTs) and criminality. Individuals with higher scores on a variety of psychometric evaluations of PPTs are more likely to engage in a wide assortment of antisocial behavior and are more likely to have official interaction with the criminal justice system. The bulk of this literature, however, has assessed these associations using modeling strategies that do not account for the potential influence of shared genetic factors. Additionally, the relatively few genetically-sensitive tests of the association between PPTs and criminal justice processing have employed individual-level models that generally do not account for the potential influence of the clustering effect of PPTs within families. The current study addresses these gaps in the literature using a sibling comparison model. Analyses of sibling dyads drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health illustrate the effects of both between- and within-family variance in PPTs on a variety of official interactions with the criminal justice system. The findings indicate the need to account for both shared genetic and shared environmental factors in assessing the influence of individual differences on antisocial behaviors and criminal justice processing.

Author

• Joseph L. Nedelec, University of Cincinnati