Examining the association between childhood cognitive ability and psychopathic traits at age 48

Abstract

Despite early theorists suggesting that psychopathic traits are associated with higher intelligence, meta-analytic work has found that global psychopathy scores are actually negatively related to intelligence, albeit weakly. Furthermore, it was reported in the same meta-analytic work that the various dimensions of psychopathy were differentially related to intelligence. Importantly, virtually all of the research to date has relied on cross-sectional associations. The current study examined whether intelligence scores (verbal comprehension, non-verbal IQ, and a global intelligence composite) at age 8 were associated with psychopathy scores at age 48 in a sample of white, urban males from London (analytical n = 292). Results suggested a significant, but weak, inverse association between intelligence and the affective, lifestyle, and antisocial facets of psychopathy and a nonsignificant association with the interpersonal facet, as assessed by the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version. These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence suggesting that psychopathy, as conceptualized in most modern models, is either very weakly inversely related to, or simply not a correlate of intelligence.