Problems of Forensic Sciences 2014 Vol. 97 (XCVII) 23-33
AFFECTIVE FUNCTIONING IN FEMALE OFFENDERS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE LEVEL OF PSYCHOPATHY AND AFFECTIVE AND COGNITIVE EMPATHY
Marlena BANASIK1, Józef K. GIEROWSKI1, 2, Małgorzata STACHURA1
1Department of Psychiatry, Jagiellonian University Medical College, Kraków, Poland
2Institute of Forensic Research, Kraków, Poland
Streszczenie
There is an acknowledged lack of research directly investigating the role of gender differences in affective functioning among Polish psychopathic offenders. The authors have responded by producing a study that attempts to advance the understanding of affective deficits in female psychopathy. Its aim is to examine the relationship between psychopathy and empathy in a group of incarcerated women. A multifaceted construct of empathy consisting of two components – emotional and cognitive – was applied in the study. The sample was composed of fifty-two female offenders aged from twenty to fifty-four from prisons in Kraków (Nowa Huta) and Kielce. The research tools deployed were Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). The statistical analysis that was conducted confirmed the existence of a statistically significant negative relationship between psychopathy and empathy. It was found that psychopathic personality was related to the emotional – but not the cognitive – aspect of empathy, that the traits associated with the interpersonal-affective factors of psychopathy coexisted with low levels of personal distress, that – as interpreted by the independent t test – the presence of certain psychopathic features caused differences in the level of empathy and that psychopathic groups of offenders could be distinguished from non-psychopathic ones by their general empathy level and by their scores on the Personal Distress Sub-Scale of the IRI.
Słowa kluczowe
Psychopathy; Female offenders; Cognitive and affective empathy; Intersexual differences in psychopathy.