Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
PLoS One. 2022 Aug 10;17(8):e0272704. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272704. eCollection 2022.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a mix of traits belonging to four facets: affective (e.g., callous/lack of empathy), interpersonal (e.g., grandiosity), behavioral instability (e.g., impulsivity, poor behavioral controls), and social deviance (e.g., juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility). Several scholars have argued that early childhood maltreatment impacts the development of psychopathy, although views regarding its role in the four facets differ. We conducted a meta-analysis including 47 studies comprising a total of 389 effect sizes and 12,737 participants, to investigate the association between psychopathy and four types of child maltreatment: physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse. We found support for a moderate link between overall psychopathy and childhood physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect, as well as overall childhood maltreatment. The link between psychopathy and childhood sexual abuse was small, but still statistically significant. These associations were stronger for the behavioral and antisocial facets than for the affective and interpersonal facets of psychopathy, but nearly all associations were statistically significant. Our findings are consistent with recently developed theories on the role of complex trauma in the development of severe personality disorders. Trauma-focused preventive and therapeutic interventions can provide further tests of the trauma-psychopathy hypothesis.
精神病态是一种人格障碍，其特征是混合了属于四个方面的特征：情感（例如，冷酷/缺乏同理心）、人际关系（例如，浮夸/缺乏同理心）、行为不稳定（例如，冲动、缺乏行为控制）和社会偏差（例如，青少年犯罪、犯罪多样性）。一些学者认为，儿童期虐待会影响精神病态的发展，尽管对于其在四个方面的作用存在不同看法。我们进行了一项荟萃分析，包括 47 项研究，共涉及 389 个效应大小和 12737 名参与者，旨在调查精神病态与四种类型的儿童虐待之间的关系：身体虐待、情感虐待、忽视和性虐待。我们发现，总体精神病态与儿童期身体虐待、情感虐待和忽视以及总体儿童虐待之间存在中度关联。精神病态与儿童性虐待之间的关联虽然较小，但仍具有统计学意义。这些关联在行为和反社会方面比情感和人际关系方面更为强烈，但几乎所有关联都具有统计学意义。我们的研究结果与最近关于复杂创伤在严重人格障碍发展中的作用的理论一致。以创伤为重点的预防和治疗干预措施可以进一步检验创伤-精神病态假说。
