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Motivational dominance in psychopaths

1988; Wiley; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.2044-8260.1988.tb00763.x

2044-8260

Brian Thomas‐Peter, J. D. McDonagh,

Crime Patterns and Interventions

Thirty-seven male, medico-legally defined psychopaths were compared with 29 similarly aged control subjects, on four measures of telic dominance. This tested a hypothesis proposed by Apter (1982) that psychopaths would be paratelic dominant, implying that their motivation would be to increase immediate experiential arousal at the expense of future planning and serious mindedness. The results indicated that the broad category of psychopaths were more telic dominant than controls, contrary to Apter's hypothesis. The same analysis was undertaken comparing control subjects and the experimental group, subdivided into three categories of primary psychopaths, secondary psychopaths and a group of non-psychopathic offenders. Significant differences were found on all four telic dominance measures. Further analysis revealed the major influence to be extreme telic dominance scores of the non-psychopathic group. No systematic differences emerged between the normal group and either of the psychopathic groups.