Graduation Year

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Criminology

Major Professor

Bryanna Fox, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Richard K. Moule, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Chae M. Jaynes, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Matthew DeLisi, Ph.D.

Keywords

Developmental/Life-Course Theories, Psychopathy, Theory Integration

Abstract

Despite empirical research identifying psychopathy as one of the most robust predictors of criminal behavior, calls to integrate psychopathy into criminological theory have largely been unrequited. Within criminological theory, the construct of psychopathy has been proposed to best fit in the developmental/life-course (DLC) paradigm. As such, the purpose of this dissertation was to explore the theoretical integration of into psychopathy into three DLC theories: (1) Moffitt’s (1993) Dual Taxonomy, (2) Gottfredson & Hirschi’s (1990) General Theory of Crime, and (3) DeLisi’s (2009) Unified Theory of Crime. In doing so, the three studies in this dissertation employed the Pathways to Desistance data of a sample of high-risk individuals who were convicted of a serious offense as an adolescent. The data from this prospective longitudinal study were chosen to be utilized in this dissertation as the data included two validated and prominent measures of psychopathy: the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV; Forth et al., 2003), a clinical measure, and the Youth Psychopathic Trait Inventory (YPI; Andershed et al., 2002), a self-report measure. Results of the three studies that comprise this dissertation provide support for integrating psychopathy into DLC perspectives to increase predictive validity and maximize parsimony of the theories. Practical implications and future research are additionally discussed.

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