Attachment and Mindfulness as Mediators in the Relationship Between Childhood Adversity and Personality Outcomes.

Past research has shown that those with greater experiences of adversity (abuse and neglect) tend to exhibit insecure attachments, more borderline symptoms, higher psychopathic traits, and are lower in mindfulness. Similarly, there have been positive relationships between insecure attachment styles and borderline and psychopathic traits as well as lower mindfulness and borderline and psychopathic traits. Further, adversity can have a detrimental effect on physical and mental health, including attachment and personality, which necessitate examining this further.

Examining the complex relations between childhood adversity, mindfulness, attachment, and various personality outcomes: A Bayesian structural equation modeling approach.

Unlabelled: Research has demonstrated that childhood abuse and neglect can negatively impact individuals into adulthood. Abuse and neglect are associated with insecure attachment, lower mindfulness, and disordered personality traits, including borderline and psychopathic traits.

Objective: The purpose of our present study was two-fold; first, we wanted to replicate the finding that the relationships between abuse and neglect and these traits are partly indirect through insecure attachment.

Using the HEXACO to explain the structure of borderline and psychopathic personality traits.

Research has examined the use of basic personality traits in describing problematic personality traits, such as borderline and psychopathic traits. Specifically, the Honesty-Humility factor of the HEXACO model of personality appears to account for a large proportion of the variance in these traits. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether the HEXACO model would similarly predict borderline traits.

The effect of fear-inducing stimuli on risk taking in people with psychopathic traits.

Research suggests that people with psychopathic traits experience fear-inducing stimuli differently from others, seeming to interpret fear as more positive and less negative. We expected that this reaction, termed , would impact the effect of fear-inducing stimuli on self-report risk-taking behaviour. Risk-taking was measured before and after viewing excitement- and fear-inducing videos (= 825).

In the eye of the beholder: Psychopathy and fear enjoyment.

Objective: We investigated the relations between psychopathic traits and fear enjoyment.

Method: In Study 1, 140 undergraduate participants (62 men, 78 women) watched the footage of video game play meant to induce either excitement or fear, rating each on positive/negative adjectives. In Study 2, 150 undergraduate participants (94 women, 56 men) rated valence (positive/negative) of 20 sets of morphed surprise/fear photos.

The Effect of Hypervigilance on the Relationship Between Sexual Victimization and Gait.

Two studies investigated the relationship between hypervigilance, vulnerable gait cues, and a history of sexual victimization. In Study 1 ( = 130), gait was coded for traits relating to vulnerability where half of the sample was unaware of being videotaped (Unaware condition) and the other half was aware (Aware condition) to induce hypervigilance (between-subjects design). Gait was associated with a history of victimization, but only in the Unaware condition.

Psychopathic Traits and the Cheater-Hawk Hypothesis.

The present study was a direct test of the cheater-hawk hypothesis which argues that psychopathy is related to two potentially adaptive interpersonal strategies: cheating and aggression. As expected, the measures of cheater and hawk behaviors comprised a single factor, according to a maximum-likelihood factor analysis. As hypothesized, psychopathic traits exhibited large positive correlations with measures of both cheater (entitlement, exploitiveness, and short-term mating orientation) and hawk (vengeance and aggression) behaviors.

Using reality monitoring to improve deception detection in the context of the cognitive interview for suspects.

Research has found that deception detection accuracy in the context of suspect interrogation hovers around chance levels. Geiselman (2012) adapted the cognitive interview (typically used for witnesses) for use with suspects (CIS) and found that judgments of deception were more accurate than previous interrogation techniques. The current study attempted to use the CIS to improve deception detection with Reality Monitoring (RM: Vrij et al.

Psychopathic Sexuality: The Thin Line Between Fantasy and Reality.

In two studies, we explored the relations between psychopathic traits and sexual fantasy content. In Study 1, we rated content themes in the fantasy narratives of 195 men and women recruited at a Canadian university. In Study 2, we administered a sexual fantasy questionnaire to a sample of 355 Canadian undergraduate students.

Psychopathy and victim selection: the use of gait as a cue to vulnerability.

Previous research has shown that victims display characteristic body language, specifically in their walking style (Grayson & Stein, 1981). Individuals scoring higher on the interpersonal/affective aspects of psychopathy (Factor 1) are more accurate at judging victim vulnerability simply from viewing targets walking (Wheeler, Book, & Costello, 2009). The present study examines the relation between psychopathy and accuracy in assessing victim vulnerability in a sample of inmates from a maximum security penitentiary in Ontario, Canada.

The dynamic prediction of antisocial behavior among forensic psychiatric patients: a prospective field study.

Staff ratings of 595 supervised forensic psychiatric patients on the Proximal Risk Factor Scale and the Problem Identification Checklist were completed monthly for an average of 33 months. During the follow-up, there were 265 incidents, 86 of which were violent. The average ratings, excluding those from the index month, differentiated patients who had incidents from those who did not.