NPR, the Hare Psychopath test and Authoritarian Morality

Even this 100% Born Evil ™
serial killer was abused as a kid.

Recently on NPR I came across an interesting story called "Can A Test Really Tell Who's A Psychopath?" which looked at the Hare Psychopathy Checklist or PCL-R. The test is used in prison sentencing and criminal parole and when someone is labelled a "psychopath" by the test, it's essentially impossible to pass parole. The test and how NPR interpreted the news story also seems to coincide with my theory of Authoritarian morality. 

Now there are some obvious issues with the test, firstly, it uses a somewhat invented definition of "psychopath", not used by any official body of science, but more importantly, it assumes that personality is completely in-born and "genetic" aka "can never change" when there's no such evidence. There's a great video that looks at this claim and how it's completely false.

In this way, the genetics claim is detrimental to the understanding of crime and violence. In fact, most violent criminals were themselves victims of violence, pointing to a environmental influence. One study points out that a violent repeat offender has a 62% chance of having a parent that abused drugs and a 53% chance of coming from an abusive household. It even went on to cite a different study that pointed out "100% of those violent juveniles needing complete neurological evaluations had been abused by parents or relatives, either physically or sexually." Yes that's a 100% and it's bold-worthy.

If anything, the test is a barometer for how much help someone needs and, chances are, if a study was ever done comparing PCL-R scores with child abuse there would be a huge correlation, throwing aside the idea that criminality is "in-born".

Study of violent female offenders and abuse in Finland. 

So how did NPR cover the story? Well at first glance it would seem like they were skeptical, interviewing a violent offender who has no chance of parole because of the test despite an apparent reform. But by the end, it's obvious NPR is only concerned with bias regarding sentencing, or people "incorrectly" using the test to lock up good people but with the test being legitimate in locking up bad people.   

The article is ends with "When you think about criminals this way — as people who are almost genetically predisposed to crime — you are much less likely to invest in their rehabilitation than if you saw their acts as the product of unfortunate environmental circumstances" and "[t]his is why it's so important to figure out if bias and bad training are affecting Hare's test to the point that it is potentially mislabeling people".

So while it's bad to "think about criminals this way" it's actually completely true but we need to be careful not to lock up good people by mistake?

Some might argue that, in fact, NPR was against using the test, but if that was case then the problem in the article would be using the test in the criminal justice system all together, not "bias and bad training".   

In this way, NPR views some people as inherently born "psychopaths" or criminals, putting it slightly higher in the Authoritarian scale then is typically expected of the liberal station.